A PICNIC WITH AGAMEMNON
“You see, gals, Agamemnon’s been the most unlucky bird that ever was
hatched,” said the little old woman, coming across the tiny lawn to
the fence where the Corner House girls were staring, round-eyed, at
the strange apparition of a rooster in a red-flannel sleeping-suit.
“But he’s the pluckiest! Yes, ma’am! He was only a pindling critter
when he pipped the shell, an’ the vi-cis-_si_-tudes that bird’s been
through since he fust scratched would ha’ made a human lay right down
and die.
“The other chickens never would let him raise a pin-feather ter cover
his nakedness; they picked on him suthin’ _awful_. I shet him up till
his wings and tail growed, an’ a rat got in an’ gnawed the feathers
right off him in one night; but Agamemnon picked and clawed so’t the
old rat didn’t bleed him much.
“And now here, lately, a neighbor got a half-breed game rooster, an’
thet pesky fightin’ bird got down here an’ sasses Agamemnon on his own
premises.
“Ag wouldn’t stand for that,” said the old lady, her blue eyes fairly
crackling. “He sailed right inter that game chicken—an’ Neighbor
Lincoln et his rooster the nex’ Sunday for dinner. ’Twas all he could
do with the critter after Agamemnon got through with him.
“But that game rooster had tore ev’ry _important_ feather off’n poor
Agamemnon’s carcass. I had to do suthin’. ’Twarn’t decent for him to
go ’round bare. So I made him that smock out of one o’ poor Eddie’s
old shirts. And there ye be!” she finished breathlessly, smiling
broadly upon the interested Corner House girls.
“I guess you are Mrs. Bobster?” asked Ruth, smiling in return.
“Are you _really_ the—the lady who lives in the shoe?” asked Dot,
round-eyed.
“That’s what they call me, pet,” said Mrs. Bobster, smiling at the
smallest Kenway. “I’m the only little old woman who lives in _this_
shoe. Poor Eddie thought we’d make a mint of money if we built over
the top of our house like that, and I sold gingercakes and sweeties to
the children who came down here to the beach. Eddie was allus mighty
smart in thinkin’ up schemes for me to make money. But the Beach
Company went up in smoke, as the sayin’ is; so we didn’t make our
fortun’ after all.”
She laughed. Indeed, this little, apple-faced old lady was almost
always laughing, it seemed.
“Poor Eddie!” she added. “I guess the Beach Company failin’ took about
all the tuck out o’ him. He said himself it was the last straw on the
camel’s back. He jest settled right down inter his chair, like; and he
didn’t last that winter out. He was allus weakly, Eddie was.”
The Corner House girls knew she must be speaking of her husband. So
now she was all alone in the house that had such a grotesque upper
story.
“No. There ain’t no children here—only them that comes in to see me,”
Mrs. Bobster said in answer to a question from Tess. “We never did
have no children; but we allus loved ’em.”
Meanwhile she had opened the gate and invited the Corner House girls
into the yard. There was an arbor which was already shaded by
quick-growing vines. The little kitchen garden, with its border of
gooseberries and currants, was as neat as it could be.
“I gotter cow of my own out back, and hens, too. I make a bare livin’
in winter, and put frills onto it in summer,” and the old lady
laughed. “These folks from the city that come livin’ in tents here,
like my bread and cookies.”
“That is what we have come to arrange for, Mrs. Bobster,” said Ruth.
“I dunno. Most all I can comferbly bake three times a week, is
bespoke,” said the little old woman who lived in a shoe. “How many is
there in your fam’bly, Miss?”
When she heard that there were just four of them—these girls
alone—and that they were to live by themselves in a tent, she grew
greatly interested.
“Surely I’ll bake for you—and cookies, too. Maybe a fruit pie oncet
in a while—’specially if you’ll go over beyond the bend when berries
is ripe and pick ’em yourself. And you gals a-livin’ all alone? Sho!
I’d think you’d be scaret to death.”
“Why, no!” said Ruth. “Why should we?”
“After dark,” said the old woman, shaking her hand.
“Who would hurt us?” asked the Corner House girl in wonder.
“Can’t most always sometimes tell,” said the old woman, shaking her
head.
“But _you_ live here alone!”
“No,” she said, quickly. “Not after dark. I ain’t never alone. Oh,
no!”
She spoke as though she were afraid Ruth might not believe her, and
repeated the denial several times.
Tess and Dot were very anxious to go upstairs and see the rooms in the
“shoe,” and they made the request to Ruth in an audible whisper.
“For sure!” cried Mrs. Bobster. “All the children that come here want
to go upstairs. If I had ’em of my own, that’s where I’d put ’em all
to bed after I’d fed ’em bread and ‘whipped ’em all soundly,’” and she
laughed.
“I don’t believe you’d have whipped the children, if you’d been the
really truly little old woman that lived in the shoe,” quoth Dot,
putting a confiding hand into the apple-faced lady’s hard palm.
“I bet _you_ wouldn’t have had to be whipped,” laughed Mrs. Bobster,
leading Dot away, with Tess following.
Later the hostess of the shoe-house brought out a pitcher of milk and
glasses with a heaping plate of ginger cookies—the old-fashioned kind
that just _melt_ on your tongue!
“Sho!” she said, when Ruth praised them. “It’s easy enough to make
good merlasses cookies. But ye don’t wanter have no conscience when it
comes to butter—no, indeed!”
Agamemnon came to the feast. In his ridiculous red flannel suit he
waddled up to his mistress and pecked crumbs off her lap when she sat
down on the bench in the arbor.
“He looks just like a person ready to go in swimming,” chuckled Agnes.
“It’s a red bathing suit.”
“That’s one thing Agamemnon can’t stand. He don’t like water,” said
Mrs. Bobster. “But if I let him out at low tide he’ll beau a flock of
hens right down to the clamflats. But now, poor thing! they won’t go
with him.”
“Who—the hens!” asked Ruth, wonderingly.
“Yes. They don’t think he looks jest right, I s’pose. If he chassés up
to one of my old biddies, she tries to tear that flannel suit right
off’n him. It’s hard on poor Agamemnon; but until his feathers start
to grow good again, I don’t dare have him go without it. He’d git
sunburned like a brick, in the fust place.”
This tickled Agnes so that she almost fell off the bench.
“But I should think the red flannel would tickle him awfully,”
murmured Tess, quite seriously disturbed over the plight of the
rooster.
“Sho! keeps away rheumatics. So poor Eddie allus said,” declared the
widow. “That’s why he wore red flannel for forty year—and he never
had a mite of rheumatism. Agamemnon ought to be satisfied he’s alive,
after all he’s been through.”
It was really very funny to see the rooster strutting about the yard
in what Agnes called his red bathing suit.
The Corner House girls remained for some time with Mrs. Bobster. When
they went back to the camp at the bend they carried their first supply
of bread and cookies.
They arrived at their tent to find a wagonette Pearl had hired in the
port, and all the other girls who had been at the Spoondrift bungalow
had come visiting.
The crowd was delighted with the way Ruth and her sisters were
situated. It looked as though to live under canvas would be great fun
indeed.
“Wish I’d spoken to Uncle Phil about it, and gotten him to hire tents
instead of putting us up at that old hotel,” declared Pearl. “And do
you know, girls, that Trix Severn told a story?”
“I didn’t suppose she’d be above being untruthful,” Ruth said, rather
indignantly.
“And you’re quite right. We found out that her father set aside a big,
double-bedded room for you four girls. Trix says she did not know
anything about it. But of course Uncle Phil would not have forgotten
you.”
“Never mind,” said Agnes. “I’m glad she acted so. We’re a whole lot
better off here.”
“I believe you!” said Carrie Poole.
“You going to have Rosa Wildwood here in the tent with you when she
comes?” asked Ann Presby.
“I’m afraid she ought to have a better place,” said Ruth. “And I
believe I know just where she would get the attention—and food—that
she needs,” and the oldest Corner House girl told the crowd about Mrs.
Bobster—the little old lady who lived in a shoe.
“If I can get the dear old thing to take Rosa to board, I know she’ll
give her just what she needs—good food, plenty of it, well cooked,
and Rosa will be in a quiet place where she can rest all she wants
to,” said Ruth.
She had no idea at the time of the strange adventure that would arise
out of this plan of hers to bring Rosa Wildwood to stay for a part of
the summer with the little old woman who lived in a shoe.