CHAPTER V
THE SHEPARDS
"Just think!" Agnes said to Ruth. "For the first time since we came tolive at the old Corner House and call it our owniest own, we are goingto have real visitors. Oh, dear, me, Ruth, I wish we could have week-endparties, and dances, and all sorts of society things. I do!"
"Mercy, Agnes! And you with your hair in plaits?"
"Whose fault is that, I'd like to know," responded the beauty a bitsharply. "I'm the only girl in my set who doesn't put her hair up. MyraStetson has worn hers up for a year--"
"She keeps house for her father and has not attended school for sixmonths," Ruth reminded her.
"Well, Eva Larry puts hers up when her mother has company. And PearlHoward--"
"Never mind the catalog of your friends, dear," put in Ruth, quietly."We know you are a much abused little girl. But your hair in plaitsyou'd better wear for a while yet.
"As for week-end parties and the like, I will speak to Mr. Howbridge andperhaps we can give some parties this winter."
"With the kids in them!" grumbled Agnes. "I want real grown-up parties."
"Let us wait till we are really grown up for them," and the elder sisterlaughed.
"Goodness! you are grown up enough, Ruth Kenway," Agnes declared. "Youmight be married at your age. Mrs. Mac says she was."
"Hush!" exclaimed Ruth, almost shocked by such a suggestion. "You do getthe most peculiar ideas in your head, Aggie."
"There's nothing peculiar about marrying," said the other girl saucily."I'm sure everybody's 'doing it.' It's quite the proper thing. You know,as the smallest member of the catechism class replied to the question:'What is the chief end of woman?' 'Marriage!' And 'tis, too," concludedthe positive Agnes.
"Do talk sensibly. But to return. Cecile and her brother visiting us isreally the first time we'll have entertained guests--save Mrs. Trebleand--"
"Oh, Mrs. Trouble and Double Trouble, or Barnabetta Scruggs and herfather, don't count," Agnes hastened to say. "_They_ were only people wetook in. But the Shepards are real guests. And I'm so glad you decidedupon giving them two of the big front rooms, Ruthie. Those guest roomsthat Uncle Peter had shut up for so many years are just beautiful. Therearen't such great rooms, or such splendid old furniture in Milton, as wehave."
"We have much to be thankful for," said Ruth placidly.
"We've a lot to be proud of," amended Agnes. "And our auto! My! Think ofus poor little miserable Kenways cutting such a dash."
"And yet you were just now longing for more nice things," pointed outRuth.
"That's my fatal ambition," sighed her sister. "I am a female--No! A_feline_--as Tess says--Napoleon. I long for more worlds to conquer likeAlexander. I dream of great things like Sir Humphrey Davy and Newton.I--"
"Do be feminine in your comparisons, if not feline," suggested Ruth,laughing. "Speak of great women, not of great men."
"Oh, indeed! Why, pray? Boadicea? Queen Elizabeth? Joan of Arc--"
"Oh I know who _she_ was," declared Dot, who had been listening,open-eyed and open-mouthed, to this harangue of the volatile sister."She was Noah's wife--and he built a big boat, and put horses and bearsand pigs and goats on it so they wouldn't be drowned--and dogs and cats.And they were fruitful and multiplied and filled the earth--"
"Oh, oh, oh!" shrieked Agnes. "That child will be the death of me! Wheredoes she pick up her knowledge of scriptural history?"
"I guess," said Ruth, kissing the pouting lips of Dot, who did notalways take kindly to being laughed at, "that our old Sandyface musthave been one of those cats Noah had. She has found four more littleblind kittens somewhere. And what we shall do about it, I do not know."
Dot and Tess ran squealing to the shed to see the new members of theCorner House family, while Neale said, chuckling:
"It's a regular _cat_astrophe, isn't it? Better fill the motor car withfeline creatures and let Aggie and me chase around through the country,dropping cats at farmers' barns."
"Never!" proclaimed Agnes. "We mean to keep on good terms with all thefarmers about Milton. We can't have them coming out and stopping us whenwe go by and demanding pay for all the hens you run over, Neale O'Neil."
"Never yet ran over but one hen," declared the boy quickly. "And she wasan old cluck hen--the farmer said so. He thought he really ought to payme for killing her. And she made soup at that."
"Come, come, come, children!" admonished Ruth. "Let us get out the booksand see if we have quite forgotten everything we ever knew."
They gathered around the sitting-room lamp, Sammy Pinkney havingappeared. Mrs. MacCall joined them with her mending, as she loved to doin the evenings. And the Corner House study hour was inaugurated for thefall with appropriate ceremonies of baked apples on the stove and aheaping plate of popcorn in the middle of the table.
"I can study so much better when I'm chewing something," Agnes admitted.
Dot was soon nodding and Mrs. MacCall from her low rocking chairobserved:
"I think little folks had better go to bed with the chickens--eh, mylassie!"
"No, Mrs. Mac; I don't want to," complained the sleepy Dot. "I've got abed of my own."
"I'll go with her," said Tess, knowing that her little sister did notlike to retire alone, even if she might object to the company ofchickens.
Really, none of them studied much on this evening; but they had a happytime. All, possibly, save Sammy. The thought of going to school onceagain made that embryo pirate very despondent.
"'Tain't that I wouldn't like to go with the fellers, and play atrecess, and hear the organ play in the big hall, and spin tops on thebasement play-room floor, and all _that_," grumbled Sammy. "But they dotry to learn us such perfectly silly things."
"What silly things?" demanded Agnes with amusement.
"Why, all 'bout 'rithmetic. Huh! Can't a feller count on his fingers?What were they given us for, I'd like to know?" demanded this youthfulphilosopher.
"Ow! ow!" murmured Neale, vastly amused.
"Huh!" went on Sammy. "Last teacher I had--mine and Tessie's--was allthe time learning us maxims, and what things meant; like _love_, and_charity_ and _happiness_. She was so silly, she was!
"That Iky Goronofsky is the thick one," added Sammy, with a grin ofrecollection. "When she was trying to make us kids understand thedifference between the meaning of those three words he couldn't get itinto his head. So she gave him three buttons, one for love, one forcharity and one for happiness, and made him take 'em home to study."
"What did he do with them!" asked Neale, interested.
"Why, when she asked Iky the next time about love, charity andhappiness, he didn't know any more than he did before," said Sammy, withdisgust. 'Where's your buttons, Iky?' she asks him, and Iky hauls outtwo of 'em.
"'There's love, Miss Shipman, and there's charity,' says Iky, 'but mymother sewed happiness on my waist this morning.' Did you ever hear ofsuch a dunce as that kid?" concluded Sammy, with disgust.
Sunday was always a busy day, if a quiet one, at the old Corner House.Everything had been done to prepare for the expected guests; but severaltimes Agnes had to enter the two big rooms which were to be devoted tothe use of Cecile Shepard and her brother, just for the sake of makingsure that all was right and ready.
In just what style the Shepards lived Agnes did not know. That theywere very well-mannered and were plainly used to what is reallyessential to cultivated people, the Corner House girls were sure.
The visitors were not wealthy, however; far from it. They had but asingle relative--a maiden aunt--and with her they made their home whenthey were not at school or off on peddling trips with a van and team ofhorses.
Cecile and Luke arrived before noon on Monday. Neale drove Ruth andAgnes down to the station in the car to meet the visitors.
"Oh, this is just scrumptious!" the second sister declared, with a sigh."To think that the Kenways would ever arrive at the point where they candrive to the station in their own car for guests--"
"Oh, squash!
" ejaculated Neale, with disgust. "She's getting to be whatUncle Rufus calls uppity. There'll be no living in the same town with myLady pretty soon."
"It is all right," Ruth said seriously, for she did not approve of Nealeany more than she could help--that was not her policy with boys. "It isperfectly proper to be glad that our circumstances have improved."
"Oh, crickey!" snorted Neale. "You girls have got up in the world,that's a fact. But I've come down. Uncle Bill Sorber wanted me to be aground and lofty tumbler."
The sisters laughed, and what might have been a bit of friction wasescaped. Even Ruth had to admit that the ex-circus boy was thebest-natured person they knew.
Well, the Shepards arrived. Cecile and Luke were just as glad to seeNeale as they were to see the Corner House girls.
Luke, sitting in the seat beside Neale on the way up town, whispered tohim: "Isn't she sweeter than ever? I declare! I never knew so nice agirl."
"Huh?" grunted Neale, and glared at his companion for a moment,forgetting that a chauffeur should keep both eyes on his business whenrunning a car in a crowded street.
"Say! were you trying to climb into that coal cart or only fooling?"gasped Luke, who although several years older than Neale had none of hisexperience as an automobile driver.
"What did you say?" asked Neale, with his eyes looking ahead again.
"Were you trying to get into that coal cart or--"
"Aw, no! About Aggie Kenway."
"Why--why I didn't say anything about her," Luke replied. "Oh! I spokeof Miss Ruth. Isn't she a splendid girl?"
"Oh! Yes! Ruth! Some!" was the way Neale agreed with this statement ofthe visitor.