The Corner House Girls on a Tour. Hill Grace Brooks
words,” laughed Agnes, who had been “crazy for a car” for months and months! “We’ll all be talking about ‘tonneaus,’ and ‘carbureters,’ and ‘gas,’ and ‘wiring,’ and ‘differentials,’ and – ”
“And ‘equilaterals,’ and ‘isosceles triangles,’ and all that,” scoffed Neale. “You’ll know a hot lot about an automobile, Agamemnon.”
“Come, young man!” exclaimed Ruth, tartly, for she was very exact with boys, feeling sure that she did not approve of them – much, “suppose you take the basket out to the car – and these wraps – and this coffee – and the little nursery icebox with the milk bottles – and – ”
“Hold on! Hold on!” yelled Neale O’Neil. “What do you think I have – as many arms as a spider? I can’t do it all in one trip.”
“Well, you might make a beginning,” suggested Ruth. “Come, Aggie. Don’t moon there all day.”
“I’m not,” said her next youngest sister. “I’m thinking.”
“What’s the difference?” demanded Neale, filling his arms with several of the things indicated by Ruth and making for the door.
“I was thinking,” said Agnes, quite seriously for her, “what a difference this is from what we were before we came to Milton and the old Corner House to live.”
Neale had gone out. Ruth looked at her with softer eyes. Ruth was not exactly pretty, but she had a very sweet face. Everybody said so. Now she looked her understanding at Agnes.
“I know, dear – I know,” she said, in her low, full, sweet voice. “This is like another world.”
“Or a dream,” said Agnes. “Do – do you suppose we’ll ever wake up, Ruthie, and find out it’s all been make-believe?”
Ruth laughed outright at that and went over and kissed her. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you,” the older sister said. “It is all real – very real indeed. What could be more real than an automobile – and of our very own?”
Dot came dancing into the room hugging a doll in her arms and cheerfully humming a school song.
“There!” exclaimed Agnes, coming out of the clouds, “I suppose that disreputable Alice-doll has got to go along. It does look awful.”
Dot stopped her song at once and her lips pouted.
“She isn’t dis – disreput’ble – she isn’t!” she cried, stormily. “She’s only sick. How would you like it, Aggie Kenway, if you’d been buried alive —and with dried apples – and had had your complexion spoiled?”
Dot was usually the most peaceful of mortals; but Agnes had touched a sore spot.
“Never mind; you shall take her, love,” Ruth said.
“I suppose if we want to go off on a real tour by and by – this coming vacation – Dot’ll have to lug that Alice-doll,” grumbled Agnes. “Suppose we meet nice people at some of the hotels we stop at, and other little girls have dolls? Dot’s will look as though she came from Meadow Street.” Meadow Street was in a poor section of Milton.
“I don’t care,” grumbled Dot; “she’s going.”
“She ought to go a hospital first,” declared Agnes.
“Who ought to go to a hospital?” demanded Neale, coming in again.
“My Alice-doll, Neale,” cried Dot, running to him, sure of sympathy – of a kind, at least.
“Well,” said the boy, “why not? If folks go to hospitals and get cured, why not dolls?”
“Oh, Neale O’Neil!” gasped Dot, hugging her cherished doll closer.
“Just think how nice Mrs. Eland was to folks in her hospital,” went on Neale, his eyes twinkling. “And Doctor Forsyth. A hospital is a mighty fine place.”
“But – but what would they do to my Alice-doll?” asked the smallest girl, seriously.
“Suppose they should give her a new complexion? Make her quite well again? Wouldn’t that be worth while?”
Dot held the really dreadful looking doll away from her and gazed with loving eyes upon the wreck of her former pink and white beauty.
“She is just as – as dear to me as ever she was,” she sighed. “But I s’pose her complexion is muddy – and her nose is flattened a little – and her lips aren’t red any more-and her eyes are washed out. But – but are you sure they won’t hurt her?”
“We’ll have to find a hospital where they agree not to hurt,” said Neale seriously.
“Now you’ve got yourself in a mess, Neale O ‘Neil,” whispered Agnes. “She’ll never let you rest.”
But the boy only grinned at her. Tess came back. Ruth brought the hats of Agnes and herself and their outer wraps. Everything that they could possibly need for the day’s outing was gathered together and taken out to the big, shiny, seven-passenger touring car that stood gloriously in the morning sunshine before the Willow Street door of the old Corner House.
Tom Jonah, the old Newfoundland dog, and the guardian of the premises, evidently desired to accompany the merry party; but Ruth vetoed that, although he might have ridden in the front seat with Neale.
“And I’m going to ride there myself,” declared Agnes, firmly. “I’ve got to learn to run this car right away. If Neale could learn, and get a license, I can. By the way, Neale, where is your license?”
“Oh, I’ve got it with me,” returned the boy. “D’ you want me to have it pasted on the back of my coat?”
“Tom Jonah must stay at home – and the kittens, too,” said Tess, looking at the troop of cats and kittens lingering about the side porch, waiting for their morning meal.
“And Billy Bumps,” added Dot, referring to the solemn old goat grazing on the drying green.
Uncle Rufus, the black factotum of the Corner House, came up from the garden, grinning widely at them.
“Don’ yo’ chillun run down nothin’ – nor run up nothin’ – w’ile yo’ is gone. I dunno ‘bout dat contraption. Ah hopes yo’ git back widout more’n a dozen laigs broke.”
“Goodness, Uncle Rufus!” cried Agnes. “What do you think we are – centipedes?”
“Dunno nottin’ ‘bout dem ’er,” declared the old colored man, chuckling. “Don’t hab center-pigs in Virginny, whar I done come from. Dey uses razorbacks fo’ de mos’ part in makin’ po’k.”
The car started amid a gale of laughter at this. Mrs. MacCall waved her cap from an open second story window. Some of the neighbors took a deep interest in their departure, too. It was certainly a fact that the Corner House girls had suddenly become of much importance since it was known that they had a car.
Ruth and the others looked up at Aunt Sarah Maltby’s windows at the front of the house as the car jounced delightfully across the tracks on Main Street. But the old lady kept her curtains drawn. She would not even look out at them.
They sped along so easily, the strong springs and shock-absorbers taking the jar at the crossings, that even Ruth sighed ecstatically. Agnes murmured:
“This is life. Oh, Neale! it’s the most delightful way to travel.”
“Is it better than riding horses in a circus, Neale?” demanded Tess, from the tonneau.
Neale laughed. He had been circus born and bred, and the little girls still believed that such a life must be one round of pleasure and excitement. They never could understand why Neale had run away from Twomley & Sorber’s Herculean Circus and Menagerie.
Suddenly Agnes, the volatile, thought of another thing. “Oh, me! Oh, my!” she cried. “What ever should we do?”
“Goodness!