"I – I can't," confessed the boy, rather shaken.
At that moment Mrs. Pinkney saw the neighbors pointing upward, and hearing them say: "See up there? In the basket! The poor thing!" she naturally thought they referred to the peril of her young son.
"Oh, Sammy Pinkney! But you just wait till your father gets home to-night!" she cried, trying to peer up at the wire. "I knew you'd get into mischief with that thing Neale O'Neil strung up there. Whatever has the boy tried to do? Walk tight-rope?"
"It's in the basket," somebody tried to explain to her.
That was too much for the excitable Mrs. Pinkney.
"He'll fall out of it! Of course he will. And break his precious neck! Oh, get a blanket! Some of you run for the fire ladders! How will we get him down?"
She sat down on the grass, threw her apron over her head, and refused to look upward at the wire carrier in which Sandyface and her kittens were suspended, and out of which she expected her reckless son to fall at any moment.
It was at this exciting moment, and into the hubbub made by the neighbors and Sandyface, that the automobile party whizzed around the corner. Neale brought the car to a sudden stop and everybody screamed.
"That Sammy Pinkney!" gasped Tess, in despair. "I just knew he'd get into something!"
CHAPTER VIII
NEIGHBOR
What with Mrs. Pinkney almost in hysterics, Tom Jonah barking, the goat blatting, Aunt Sarah scolding, and the neighbors in a general uproar, it was scarcely possible for anybody to make himself heard.
Therefore Neale said nothing. He hopped out from behind the steering wheel of the touring car and ran into the back premises, from which he dragged the tall fruit-picking ladder that Uncle Rufus had stowed away.
Fortunately before any excited person turned in a fire alarm, Neale, with the help of Luke Shepard and Uncle Rufus, set up the step-ladder directly under the squalling cat and her kittens. From the top step, on which he perched precariously with Luke and the old negro steadying the ladder, Neale reached up with a rake and unhooked the hanging basket from the tramway.
It was rather a delicate piece of work, and the children were scarcely assured of Sandyface's safety – nor was the old cat sure of it herself – until Neale, hanging the basket on the reversed garden rake, lowered the entire family to the ground.
"Sartain suah am glad to see dat ol' coat ob' mine again," mumbled Uncle Rufus, as everybody else was congratulating one another upon the safety of the cats. "I had a paper dollar tucked away ag'in some time w'en I'd need it, in de inside pocket of dat ol' coat. It moughty near got clean 'way f'om me, 'cause of dat boy's foolishness. Sartain suah am de baddes' boy I ever seen."
The consensus of opinion seemed to follow the bent of Uncle Rufus' mind. Sammy was in evil repute in the neighborhood in any case; this was considered the capsheaf.
Had it not been that the aerial tramway was so securely affixed to the two houses, and to take it down would be to deprive Tess, who was innocent, of some amusement, Mrs. Pinkney would have ordered the connections between the two houses severed at once.
As it was, she drove the shamefaced Sammy into the house ahead of her, and some of his boy acquaintances, lingering with ghoulish curiosity outside, heard unmistakable sounds of punishment being inflicted upon the culprit.
He was then sent up to his room to meditate. And just outside his screened window was the tantalizing tramway which Neale had repaired and which was again in good working order.
Sammy had been forbidden to use the new plaything; but the little Corner House girls soon began to feel sorry for him. Even Tess thought that his punishment was too hard.
"For he didn't really hurt Sandyface and the kittens. Only scared 'em," she said.
"But s'pose they'd've got dizzy and fell out – like I did out of the swing?" Dot observed, inclined to make the matter more serious even than her sister. "Then what would have happened?"
Tess nevertheless felt sorry for the culprit, and seeing his woe-begone and tear-stained face pressed close to his chamber window, she wrote the following on a piece of pasteboard, stood it upright in the basket and drew it across so that Sammy might read it:
DONT MINE SAmmY WE Ar SORRY
THe CATS AR Al RITE
DOT & TESS
The "catastrophy" as Neale insisted upon calling the accident, threw some gloom into an otherwise pleasant day – for the little girls at least. And that evening something else was discovered that sent Dot to bed in almost as low a state of mind as that with which Sammy Pinkney retired.
This second unfortunate incident happened after supper, when they were all gathered in the sitting room, Neale, too, being present. Luke asked Dot if she had decided upon a name for the new baby.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Luke," the smallest Corner House girl replied. "The sailor-baby was christened to-day. Didn't you know!"
"I hadn't heard about it," he confessed. "What is he called?"
Dot told him proudly. And Tess said:
"Don't you think it is a pretty name? Dot found it all her own self. It was painted on a barn."
"What's that?" asked Neale suddenly. "What was painted on a barn?"
"The sailor-baby's name," Dot said proudly. "'Nosmo King Kenway.'"
"On a barn!" repeated the puzzled Neale. "Whose barn?"
When he learned that it was Mr. Stout's tobacco barn he looked rather funny and asked several other questions of the little girls.
Then he drew a sheet of paper toward him and with a pencil printed something upon it, which he passed to Agnes. She burst into laughter at once, and passed the paper on.
"What is it?" Dot asked curiously. "Is it a funny picture he's drawed?"
"It's funnier than a picture," laughed Luke, who had taken a squint at the paper. "I declare, isn't that a good one!"
"I don't think you folks are very polite," Tess said, rather haughtily, for the others were not going to show the paper to the little girls. On the sheet Neale had arranged the letters of the new baby's name as they were meant to be read – for he knew what was painted upon the inside of the doors of Mr. Stout's barn:
NO SMOKING
Ruth, however, would not let the joke go on. She took Dot up on her lap and explained kindly how the mistake had been make. For Nosmo was a pretty name; nobody could deny it. And, of course, King sounded particularly aristocratic.
Nevertheless, Dot there and then dropped the sailor-baby's fancy name, and he became Jack, to be known by that name forever more.
After the smaller girls had disappeared stairward, Neale and Luke unfolded one of the card-tables and began a game of chess which shut them entirely out of the general conversation for the remainder of the evening.
The girls and Mrs. MacCall chatted companionably. They had much to tell each other, for, after all, the Corner House girls and Cecile Shepard had spent but one adventurous night together and they needed to learn the particulars of each other's lives before they really could feel "at home with one another," as Agnes expressed it.
Cecile and her brother could scarcely remember their parents; and the maiden aunt they lived with – a half sister of their father's – was the only relative they knew anything about.
"Oh, no," Cecile said, "we can expect no step-up in this world by the aid of any interested relative. There is no wealthy and influential uncle or aunt to give us a helping hand. We're lucky to get an education. Aunt Lorena makes that possible with her aid. And she does what she can, I know full well, only by much self-sacrifice."
Then the cheerful girl began to laugh reminiscently. "That is," she pursued, "I can look forward to the help of no fairy godmother or godfather. But Luke is in better odor with Neighbor than I am."
"'Neighbor'!" repeated Ruth. "Who is he? Or is it a what?"
"Or a game?" laughed Agnes. "'Neighbor'!"
"He is really great fun," said Cecile, still laughing. "So I suppose he might be called a game. He really is a 'neighbor,' however. He is a man named Henry Harrison Northrup, who lives right beside Aunt Lorena's little cottage in Grantham.
"You see, Luke and I used always to work around Aunt Lorena's yard, and have a garden, and chickens, and what-not when we were younger. Everybody has big yards in that part of Grantham. And Mr. Northrup, on one side, was always quarreling with auntie. He is a misogynist – "
"A mis-what-inest?" gasped Mrs. MacCall, hearing a new word.
"Oh, I know!" cried Agnes, eagerly. "A woman-hater. A man who hates women."
"Humph!" scoffed Mrs. MacCall, "is there such indeed? And what do they call a man-hater?"
"That, Mrs. MacCall, I cannot tell you," laughed Cecile. "I fear there are no women man-haters – not really. At least there is no distinctive title for them in the dictionary."
"So much the worse for the dictionary, then," said the Scotch woman. "And, of course, that's man-made!"
"It was only the Greeks who were without 'em," put in Ruth, smiling. "The perfectly good, expressive English word 'man-hater' is in the dictionary without a doubt."
"But do go on about Neighbor," Agnes urged. "Does he quarrel with you people all the time?"
"Not with Luke," Cecile explained. "He likes Luke. He is really very fond of him, although it seems positively to hurt him to show love for anybody.
"But a long time ago Mr. Northrup began to show an interest in Luke. He would come to the fence between his and Aunt Lorena's places, and talk with Luke by the hour. But if either I or aunty came near he'd turn right around and walk away.
"He never allows a woman inside his door and hasn't, they say, for twenty years. He has a Japanese servant – the only one that was ever seen in Grantham; and they get along without a woman."
"I'd like tae see intae that hoos," snapped Mrs. MacCall, shaking her head and dropping into her broad Scotch, as she often did when excited. "What could twa' buddies of men do alone at housekeeping!"
"Oh, the Jap is trained to it," Cecile said. "Luke says everything is spick and span there. And Mr. Northrup himself, although he dresses queerly in old-fashioned clothes, has always clean linen and is well brushed.
"But he does not often appear outside of his own yard. He really hates to meet women. His front gate is locked. Luke climbs the fence when he goes to see Neighbor; but people with skirts aren't supposed to be able to climb fences; so Mr. Northrup is pretty safe. Even the minister's wife doesn't get in."
"But why do you call him Neighbor?" asked Ruth again.
"That's what he told Luke to call him in the first place. We were not very old when Luke's strange friendship with Mr. Northrup began. After they had become quite chummy Luke, who was a little fellow, asked the old gentleman if he couldn't call him Uncle Henry. You see, Luke liked him so much that he wanted to say something warmer than Mister.
"But that would never do. Mr. Northrup seemed to think that might connect him in people's minds with Aunt Lorena. So he told Luke finally to call him Neighbor.
"Of course, the old gentleman is really a dear– only he doesn't know it," continued Cecile. "He thinks he hates women, and the idea of marriage is as distasteful to him as a red rag is to a bull.
"He is going to leave Luke all his money he says. At any rate, he has promised to do something for him when he gets out of college if he manages to graduate in good odor with the faculty," and Cecile laughed.
"But if Luke should suggest such a thing as marrying – even if the girl were the nicest girl in the world – Neighbor would not listen to it. He would cut their friendship in a moment, I know," added the girl seriously. "And his help may be of great value to Luke later on."
If Cecile had some reason for telling the older Corner House girls and Mrs. MacCall this story she did not point the moral of it by as much as a word or a look. They were quickly upon another topic of conversation. But perhaps what she had said had taken deep root in the heart of one, at least, of her audience.
CHAPTER IX
EVERYTHING AT SIXES AND SEVENS
Things sometimes begin to go wrong the very moment one wakes up in the morning.
Then there is the coming down to breakfast with a teeny, weeny twist in one's temper that makes some unfeeling person say:
"I guess you got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning."
Now, of course, that is silly. There can be no wrong side to a bed – that is, to get out of. Getting up has nothing to do with it. Things are just wrong and that is all there is to it.
Fortunately this state of mind seldom lasted all day with any of the four Corner House girls; nor did they often begin the day in such a humor.
But there are exceptions to every rule, they say. And this Wednesday most certainly was the day when matters were "at sixes and sevens" for Dorothy Kenway.
It would not be at all surprising if the trouble started the evening before when she learned that she had inadvertently named her new baby No Smoking. That certainly was cause for despair as well as making one feel horribly ridiculous.
Of course, Ruth in her kind way, had tried to make the smallest Corner House girl forget it; but Dot remembered it very clearly when morning came and she got up.
Then, she could not find the slippers she had worn the day before; and if Mrs. MacCall saw her with her best ones on, there would be something said about it – Dot knew that.
Then, Tess seemed suddenly very distant to her. She had something on her mind and carried herself with her very "grown-upest" air with Dot. The latter, on this morning particularly, hated to admit that Tess was more than a very few days older than herself.
Tess went off on this business that made her so haughty, all by herself, right after breakfast. When Dot called after her:
"Where are you going, Tess?" the latter had said very frankly, "Where you can't go," and then went right on without stopping for a moment to argue the point.
"I do think that is too mean for anything!" declared Dot to herself, quite too angry to cry. She sat sullenly on the porch steps, and although she heard Sandyface purring very loudly and suggestively, just inside the woodshed door, she would not get up to go to see the old cat's babies – of which Sandyface was inordinately proud.
"Wait," ruminated Dot, shaking her head. "Wait till Tess Kenway wants me to go somewhere with her. I won't go! There, now!"
So she sat, feeling very lonesome and miserable, and "enjoying" it immensely. She need not have been lonely. She could hear the older girls and Luke laughing in the front of the house, and she would have been welcomed had she gone there. Ruth was always a comforter, and even Agnes seldom said the smallest girl nay.
But Dot had managed to raise a laugh a little while before – she being the person laughed at. She chanced to hear Luke, who was running lightly over the old and yellowed keys of the piano, say:
"No wonder these instruments cost so much. You know it takes several elephants alone to make these," and he struck another chord.
Dot had heard about the intelligence of elephants and like most other little people believed that the great pachyderms could do almost anything. But this was too much for even Dot Kenway's belief.
"Oh, Ruth! elephants can't work at that trade, can they?" she demanded.
"What trade, honey?" asked the surprised older sister.
"Piano making. I should think that carpenters built pianos – not elephants."
Of course, the older ones had laughed, and Dot's spirits had fallen another degree, although Ruth was careful to explain to the little girl that Luke had meant it took the tusks of several elephants to fashion the ivory keys for one piano.
However, Dot was in no mood for "tagging" after the older ones. She just wanted to sit still and suffer! She heard Mabel Creamer "hoo-hooing" for her from beyond the yard fence, but she would not answer. Had it not been for the Alice-doll (which of course she hugged tight to her troubled little breast) life would have scarcely seemed worth living to the smallest Corner House girl.
And just then she looked up and saw a picture across the street even more woe-begone than the one she herself made. It was Sammy Pinkney, gloom corrugating his brow, an angry flush in his cheeks, and sullenly kicking the toe first of one shoe and then the other against the pickets of the fence where he stood.
It was evident that Sammy had been forbidden freedom other than that of his own premises. He stared across at the smallest Corner House girl; but he was too miserable even to hail Dot.
After all, it seemed to the latter, that Sammy was being inordinately punished for having given Sandyface and her family an aerial ride. Besides, misery loves company. Dot was in no mood to mingle with the joyous and free. But Sammy's state appealed to her deeply.
She finally got up off the step and strolled out of the yard and across the street.
"'Lo, Sammy," she said, as the boy continued to stare in another direction though knowing very well that she was present before him.
"'Lo, Dot," he grumbled.
"What's the matter, Sammy?" she asked.
"Ain't nothin' the matter," he denied, kicking on the pickets again.
"Dear me," sighed Dot, "I just think everything's too mean for anything!"
"Huh!"
"And everybody at my house is mean to me, too," added the little girl, stirring up her own bile by the audible reiteration of her thoughts. "Yes, they are!"
"Huh!" repeated the scornful Sammy. "They ain't nowhere near as mean to you as my folks are to me."
"You don't know – "
"Did they lick you?" demanded the boy fiercely.
"No-o."
"And then make you stay in your room and have your supper there?"
"No-o."
"Ma brought it up on a tray," the boy said fiercely, "so I couldn't get no second helping of apple dumpling."
"Oh, Sammy!" Somehow, after all, his misery seemed greater than her own. Yet there was a sore spot in the little girl's heart. "I – I wish I could run away," she blurted out, never having thought of such a thing until that very moment. "Then they'd see."
"Hist!" breathed Sammy, coming closer and putting his lips as close to the little girl's ear as the pickets would allow. "Hist! I am going to run away!"
Dot took this statement much more calmly than he expected.
"Oh, yes," she said. "When you go to be a pirate. You've told me that before, Sammy Pinkney." In fact, she had been hearing this threat ever since she had come to the old Corner House and become acquainted with this youngster.
"And I am going to be a pirate," growled Sammy, with just as deep a voice as he could muster.
"Oh! not now?" gasped Dot, suddenly realizing that this occasion was fraught with more seriousness than any previous one of like character. "You aren't going right off now to be a pirate, Sammy Pinkney?"
"Yes, I am," declared the boy.
"Not now? Not this morning? Not before your mother comes back from marketing?" for she had seen Mrs. Pinkney's departure a few minutes before.
"Yes, I am," and Sammy clinched it with a vigorous nod, although he had not meant to run away until nightfall. People usually waited for night to run away so it seemed to Sammy, but he was not going to have his intention doubted.
"Oh, Sammy!" gasped Dot, clasping her hands across the Alice-doll's stomach, "are – are there girl pirates?"
"Are there what?" questioned Sammy in doubt.
"Can girls run away and be pirates, too?"
"Why – er – they wouldn't dars't."
"Yes, I would."
"You! Dot Kenway?"
"Yes I would," repeated Dot stubbornly.
"You want to be a pirate?" repeated Sammy. Of course he would rather have a boy to run away with. But then —
"Why can't girls be pirates?" demanded the logical Dot. "Don't pirates have to have somebody to cook and wash and keep house for them?"
"I – I don't know," admitted Sammy honestly. "I never read about any girl pirates. But," as he saw Dot's pretty face beginning to cloud over, "I don't know why there shouldn't be, if they wasn't too 'fraid."
"I won't be afraid," Dot declared, steeling herself as she had once done when she was forced to go to the dentist's office.
"We-ell," began Sammy still doubtfully. But Dot was nothing if not determined when once she made up her mind.
"Now, you come right along, Sammy Pinkney, if we're going to run away and be pirates. You know your mother won't let you if she comes home and catches you here."
"But – but we ought to take something to eat – and some clothes – and – and a pistol and a knife – "
"Oo-ee!" squealed the little girl. "You won't take any horrid pistol and knife if you're going to run off to be pirates with me, Sammy Pinkney. Why, I'd be afraid to go with you."
"Huh!" grumbled Sammy, "you don't haf to go."
"But you said I could," Dot declared, sure of her position. "And now you can't back out – you know you can't, Sammy. That wouldn't be fair."
"Aw, well. We gotter have money," he objected faintly.
"I'll run and get my purse," the little girl said cheerfully. "I've got more than fifty cents in it."
But now unwonted chivalry began to stir faintly in Sammy's breast. If they were going away together, it should be his "treat." He marched into the house, smashed his bank with the kitchen poker, and came out with a pocket full of silver and nickels that looked as if they amounted to much more than they really did.
However, the sinews of war in his pocket was not without a certain inspiration and comfort. Money would go a long way toward getting them to a place where their respective families could neither nag nor punish them.
As runaways they may have been different from most. But, then, Sammy and Dot were very modern runaways indeed. People who saw them merely observed two very well dressed children, walking hand in hand toward the suburbs of Milton; the little girl hugging a doll to her breast and the boy with a tight fist in one pocket holding down a couple of dollars worth of change.
Who would have dreamed that they were enamored of being pirates and expected to follow a career of rapine and bloodthirsty adventure on the Spanish Main?