CHAPTER VIII
INTRODUCTIONS
"Oh, goodness to gracious! Here comes old Mr. Abel--and he has fire inhis eye, Ruth!" gasped Agnes.
"What--what's he going to do?" stammered Ruth, clinging to Agnes' handunder the hymn-book which they shared together.
"Something awful! Poor Neale!"
"His head looks a fright," declared Ruth.
"And everybody's laughing," groaned Agnes.
"Girls!" admonished Mrs. MacCall, "try to behave."
The creaking of the deacon's boots drew near. Old Mr. Abel kept acut-price shoe shop and it was a joke among the young folk of Miltonthat all the shoes he sold were talking shoes, for when you walked inthem they said very plainly:
"Cheap! cheap! cheap!"
Soon the minister noted the approach of Deacon Abel. As the old manstopped by the Kenway pew, the minister lost the thread of hisdiscourse, and stopped. A dread silence fell upon the church.
The deacon leaned forward in front of the little girls and Mrs. MacCall.His face was very red, and he shook an admonitory finger at the startledNeale O'Neil.
"Young man!" he said, sonorously. "Young man, you take off that wig andput it in your pocket--or leave this place of worship immediately."
It was an awful moment--especially awful for everybody in the Kenwaypew. The girls' cheeks burned. Mrs. MacCall glared at the boy in utterstupefaction.
Deacon Abel was a very stern man indeed--much more so than the clergymanhimself. All the young folk of the congregation stood in particular aweof him.
But poor Neale O'Neil, unconscious of any wrong intent, merely gazed atthe old gentleman in surprise. "Wha--wha--_what_?" he gasped.
"Get out of here, young man!" exclaimed the deacon. "You have got thewhole crowd by the ears. A most disgraceful exhibition. If I had thewarming of your jacket I certainly would be glad."
"Oh!" exclaimed Ruth, horrified.
Agnes was really angry. She was an impulsive girl and she could not failto espouse the cause of anybody whom she considered "put upon." She roseright up when Neale stumbled to his feet.
"Never you mind, Neale!" she whispered, shrilly. "He's a mean old thing!I'm coming, too."
It was a very wrong thing to say, but Agnes never stopped to think how athing was going to sound when she was angry. The boy, his face aflame,got out through the next pew, which chanced to be empty, and Agnesfollowed right on behind him before Ruth could pull her back into herseat.
Nobody could have stopped her. She felt that Neale O'Neil was beingill-treated, and whatever else you could say about Aggie Kenway, youcould not truthfully say that she was not loyal to her friends.
"Cheap! cheap! cheap!" squeaked the deacon's boots as he went back upone aisle while the boy and girl hurried up the other. It seemed toNeale as though the church was filled with eyes, staring at him.
His red face was a fine contrast for his rainbow-hued hair, but Agneswas as white as chalk.
The minister took up his discourse almost immediately, but it seemed tothe culprits making their way to the door as though the silence had heldthe congregation for an hour! They were glad to get through the baizedoors and let them swing together behind them.
Neale clapped his cap on his head, hiding a part of the ruin, but DeaconAbel came out and attacked him hotly:
"What do you mean by such disgraceful actions, boy?" he asked, withquivering voice. "I don't know who you are--you are a stranger to me;but I warn you never to come here and play such jokes again----"
"It isn't a joke, Mr. Abel!" cried Agnes.
"What do you call it, then? Isn't that one of them new-fangled wigs Iread folks in the city wear to dances and other affairs? What's he gotit on for?"
"It isn't a wig," Agnes said, while Neale clutched wildly at his hair.
"Don't tell me it's his own hair!" almost shouted the old gentleman.
"What's the matter with my hair?" demanded the puzzled boy.
"Doesn't he know? Do you mean to say he doesn't know what his head lookslike?" cried the amazed deacon. "Come! come into this room, boy, andlook at your hair."
There was the ushers' dressing-room at one end of the vestibule; he ledNeale in by the arm. In the small mirror on the wall the boy got afairly accurate picture of his hirsute adornment.
Without a word--after his first gasp of amazement--Neale turned andwalked out of the room, and out of the church. It was a hot Sunday andthe walks were bathed in sunshine. Neale involuntarily took the pathacross the Parade in the direction of the old Corner House.
At this hour--in the middle of sermon time--there was scarcely anybodyin sight. Milton observed Sunday most particularly--especially in thisbetter quarter of the town.
Neale had gone some way before he realized that Agnes was just besidehim. He looked around at her and now his face was very pale.
"What did you come for?" he asked her, ungraciously enough.
"I'm so sorry, Neale," the girl whispered, drawing nearer to his elbow.
The boy stared for a moment, and then exclaimed: "Why, Aggie! you're agood little sport, all right."
Aggie blushed vividly, but she hastened to say: "Why did you do it,Neale?"
"I--I can't tell you," replied the boy, in some confusion. "Only I gotto change the color of my hair."
"But, mercy! you needn't have changed it to so many colors all at once!"cried she.
"Huh! do you think--like that old man--that I did it a-purpose?"
"But you _did_ dye it!"
"I tried to."
"That was the stuff you were buying yesterday in the drugstore?" shequeried.
"Yes. And I put it on just before I started for church. He said it wouldmake the hair a beautiful brown."
"_Who_ said so?"
"That drugstore clerk," said Neale, despondently.
"He never sold you hair-dye at all!"
"Goodness knows what it was----"
"It's stained your collar--and it's run down your neck and dyed _that_green."
"Do you suppose I can ever get it off, Aggie?" groaned the boy.
"We'll try. Come on home and we'll get a lot of soapsuds in a tub in thewoodshed--so we can splash it if we want to," said the suddenlypractical Agnes.
They reached the woodshed without being observed by Uncle Rufus. Agnesbrought the water and the soap and a hand-brush from the kitchen. Nealeremoved his collar and tie, and turned back the neck of his shirt. Agnesaproned her Sunday frock and went to work.
But, sad to relate, the more she scrubbed, and the more Neale suffered,the worse his hair looked!
"Goodness, Aggie!" he gasped at last. "My whole scalp is as sore as aboil. I don't believe I can stand your scrubbing it any more."
"I don't mean to hurt you, Neale," panted Agnes.
"I know it. But isn't the color coming out?"
"I--I guess it's _set_. Maybe I've done more harm than good. It's a sortof a sickly green all over. I never _did_ see such a head of hair,Neale! And it was so pretty before."
"_Pretty!_" growled Neale O'Neil. "It was a nuisance. Everybody who eversaw me remembered me as the 'white-haired boy.'"
"Well," sighed Agnes, "whoever sees that hair of yours _now_ willremember you, and no mistake."
"And I have to go to school with it to-morrow," groaned Neale.
"It will grow out all right--in time," said the girl, trying to becomforting.
"It'll take more time than I want to spend with green hair," returnedNeale. "I see what I'll have to do, Aggie."
"What's that?"
"Get a Riley cut. I don't know but I'd better be _shaved_."
"Oh, Neale! you'll look so funny," giggled Agnes, suddenly becominghysterical.
"That's all right. You have a right to laugh," said Neale, as Agnes fellback upon a box to have her laugh out. "But I won't be any funnierlooking with _no_ hair than I would be with green hair--make up yourmind to that."
Neale slipped over the back fence into Mr. Murphy's premises, before therest of the Kenway family came
home, and the girls did not see him againthat day.
"How the folks stared at us!" Ruth said, shaking her head. "It wouldhave been all right if you hadn't gotten up and gone out with him,Aggie."
"Oh, yes! let that horrid old Deacon Abel put him out of church just asthough he were a stray dog, and belonged to nobody!" cried Agnes.
"Well, he doesn't belong to us, does he?" asked Dot, wonderingly.
"We're the only folks he has, I guess, Dot," said Tess, as Agnes wentoff with her head in the air.
"He has Mr. Murphy--and the pig," said Dot, slowly. "But I like Neale.Only I wish he hadn't painted his hair so funny."
"I'd like to have boxed his ears--that I would!" said Mrs. MacCall, invexation. "I thought gals was crazy enough nowadays; but to think of a_boy_ dyeing his hair!"
Aunt Sarah shook her head and pursed her lips, as one who would say, "Iknew that fellow would come to some bad end." But Uncle Rufus, havingheard the story, chuckled unctuously to himself.
"Tell yo' what, chillen," he said to the girls, "it 'mind me ob de timew'en my Pechunia was a young, flighty gal. Dese young t'ings, dey ain'tnebber satisfied wid de way de good Lawd make 'em.
"I nebber did diskiver w'y Pechunia was so brack, as I say afore. But'tain't an affliction. She done t'ink it was. She done talk erboutface-bleach, an' powder, an' somet'ing she call 'rooch' wot whitesassiety wimmens fixes up deir faces wid, an' says she ter me, 'Pap, Iis gwine fin' some ob dese yere fixin's fur my complexion.'
"'Yo' go 'long,' I says ter her. 'Yo's a _fast_ brack, an' dat's alldere is to hit. Ef all de watah an' soap yo' done use ain't take noparticle of dat soot off'n yo' yit, dere ain't nottin' eber _will_remove it.'
"But yo' kyan't change a gal's natur. Pechunia done break her back oberde washtub ter earn de money to buy some o' dem make-up stuff, an' shegoes down ter de drug sto' ter mak' her purchases. She 'low ter spen'much as six bits fer de trash.
"An' firs' t'ing she axed for was face powder--aw, my glo-_ree_! Declerk ask her: 'Wot shade does yo' want, Ma'am? An' Pechunia giggles an'replies right back:
"'Flesh color, Mister.'
"An' wot you t'ink dat young scalawag ob a clerk gib her?" chuckledUncle Rufus, rolling his eyes and shaking his head in delight. "W'y, hedone gib her _powdered charcoal_! Dat finish Pechunia. She nebber triedto buy nottin' mo' for her complexion--naw, indeedy!"
The girls of the old Corner House learned that Neale was up early onMonday morning, having remained in hiding the remainder of Sunday. Hesought out a neighbor who had a pair of sheep-shears, and Mr. Murphycropped the boy's hair close to his scalp. The latter remained apea-green color and being practically hairless, Neale looked worse thana Mexican dog!
He was not at all the same looking youth who had dawned on Agnes' visionthe Monday morning previous, and had come to her rescue. She saidherself she never would have known him.
"Oh, dear!" she said to Ruth. "He looks like a gnome out of a funnypicture-book."
But Neale O'Neil pulled his cap down to his ears and followed behind theKenway girls to school. He was too proud and too sensitive to walk withthem.
He knew that he was bound to be teased by the boys at school, when oncethey saw his head. Even the old cobbler had said to him:
"'Tis a foine lookin' noddle ye have now. Ye look like a tinder graneonion sproutin' out of the garden in the spring. Luk out as ye go overth' fince, me la-a-ad, for if that ormadhoun of a goat sees ye, he'llate ye alive!"
This was at the breakfast table, and Neale had flushed redly, being halfangry with the old fellow.
"That's right, la-a-ad," went on Mr. Murphy. "Blushin' ain't gone out o'fashion where you kem from, I'm glad ter see. An' begorra! ye're morepathriotic than yer name implies, for I fear that's Scotch instead ofIrish. I see now ye've put the grane above the red!"
So Neale went to school on this first day in no very happy frame ofmind. He looked so much different with his hair cropped, from what hehad at church on Sunday, that few of the young folks who had observedhis disgrace there, recognized him--for which the boy was exceedinglyglad.
He remained away from the Kenway girls, and in that way escapedrecognition. He had to get acquainted with some of thefellows--especially those of the highest grammar grade. Being a newscholar, he had to meet the principal of the school, as well as MissShipman.
"Take your cap off, sir," said Mr. Marks, sternly. Unwillingly enough hedid so. "For goodness' sake! what have you been doing to your head?"demanded the principal.
"Getting my hair clipped, sir," said Neale.
"But the color of your head?"
"That's why I had the hair clipped."
"What did you do to it?"
"It was an accident, sir," said Neale. "But I can study just as well."
"We will hope so," said the principal, his eyes twinkling. "But green isnot a promising color."
Ruth had taken Dot to the teacher of the first grade, primary, and Dotwas made welcome by several little girls whom she had met at Sundayschool during the summer. Then Ruth hurried to report to the principalof the Milton High School, with whom she had already had an interview.
Tess found her grade herself. It was the largest room in the wholebuilding and was presided over by Miss Andrews--a lady of most uncertainage and temper, and without a single twinkle in her grey-green eyes.
But with Tess were several girls she knew--Mable Creamer; Margaret andHolly Pease; Maria Maroni, whose father kept the vegetable and fruitstand in the cellar of one of the Stower houses on Meadow Street; UncleRufus' granddaughter, Alfredia (with the big red ribbon bow); and alittle Yiddish girl named Sadie Goronofsky, who lived with herstep-mother and a lot of step-brothers and sisters in another of thetenements on Meadow Street which had been owned so many years by UnclePeter Stower.
Agnes and Neale O 'Neil met in the same grade, but they did not have achance to speak, for the boys sat on one side of the room, and the girlson the other.
The second Kenway girl had her own troubles. During the weeks she livedat the old Corner House, she had been looking forward to entering schoolin the fall, so she had met all the girls possible who were to be in hergrade.
Now she found that, school having opened, the girls fell right back intotheir old associations. There were the usual groups, or cliques. Shewould have to earn her place in the school, just as though she did notknow a soul.
Beatrice, or "Trix" Severn, was not one of those whom Agnes was anxiousto be friendly with; and here Trix was in the very seat beside her,while Eva Larry and Myra Stetson were across the room!
The prospect looked cloudy to Agnes, and she began the first schoolsession with less confidence than any of her sisters.