"I say, Mrs. MacCall," proceeded the irrepressible boy. "Plenty of baked beans and fishcakes for supper to-night. I see very plainly that these girls have brought very little to eat along of a solid character. I shall be hungry when we get back."

At that moment Tess cried: "Oh, poor Tom Jonah!" And Dot echoed her: "Poor Tom Jonah!"

"Look how eager he is!" cried Agnes.

The big dog stood at the gate. Old as he was, the idea of an outing pleased him immensely. He was always delighted to go picnicking with the Corner House girls; but as the legend on his collar proclaimed, Tom Jonah was a gentleman, and n.o.body had invited him to go on this occasion.

"Oh, Ruth! let him come!" cried the three younger girls in chorus.

"Why not?" added Agnes.

"Well, I don't know," said Ruth.

"It will be a long march for him," said Neale, doubtfully. "He'll get left behind. The horses are fast."

"Well, you are the one to see that he isn't left behind, Neale O'Neil,"

a.s.serted Ruth.

"All right," said the boy, meekly, but winking at Uncle Rufus and Mrs.

MacCall. Neale had wanted the old dog to go all the time, and his remark had turned the scale in Tom Jonah's favor.

"Come, boy! you can go, too," Ruth announced as the horses started.

Tom Jonah uttered a joyful bark, circled the carriage and pair two or three times in the exuberance of his delight, and then settled down to a steady pace under the rear axle. Neale saw to it that the lively ponies did not travel too fast for the old dog.

The carriage rattled across Main Street and out High Street. The town was soon left behind, Neale following the automobile road along which ran the interurban electric tracks to Fleeting and beyond.

"Oh, yes!" said Agnes, gloomily. "I know this is the way to Fleeting, Neale O'Neil. Wish I'd never been there."

"Has Mr. Marks ever said anything further to you girls about Bob Buckham's strawberries?" asked her boy friend.

"No. But you see, we haven't played any more outside games, either. And I _know_ they'll give _The Carnation Countess_ this winter and we won't any of us be allowed to play in it."

"I'm going to be a bee," announced Dot, seriously, "if they have the play. I'll have wings and a buzzer."

"A buzzer?" demanded Tess. "What's that?"

"Well, bees buzz, don't they? If they make bees out of us, as teacher says they will, we'll have to buzz, won't we? We're learning a buzzing song now."

"Goodness! and you'll be provided with a stinger, too, I suppose!"

exclaimed Agnes.

"Oh! we shall be tame bees," Dot said. "Not at all wild. The song says so.

"'We are little honey-bees, Honey sweet our disposition.

We appear here now to please, Making sweets our avocation.

Buzz! buzz! buzz-z-z-z!'

That's a verse," concluded Dot.

"Miss Pepperill," observed Tess, sadly, "said only yesterday that if we were in the play at all we might act the part of imps better than anything else. It would come natural to us."

"Poor Miss Pepperpot!" laughed Agnes. "She must find your cla.s.s a great cross, Tess. How's Sammy standing just now?"

"He hasn't done anything to get her very mad since he wrote about the duck," Tess said gravely. "But Sadie Goronofsky got a black mark yesterday. And Miss Pepperill laughed, too."

"What for?" asked Ruth.

"Why, teacher asked why Belle Littleweed hadn't been at school for two days and Alfredia Blossom told her she guessed Belle's father was dead.

He was 'spected to die, you know."

"Well, what about Sadie?" asked Agnes, for Tess seemed to have lost the thread of her story.

"Why, Sadie speaks up and says: 'Teacher, I don't believe Mr. Littleweed is dead at all. I see their clothes on the line and they was all white--nightgowns and all.'"

"The idea!" giggled Agnes.

"That's what Miss Pepperill said. She asked Sadie if she thought folks wore black nightgowns when they went into mourning, and Sadie says: 'Why not, teacher? Don't they feel just as bad at night as they do in the daytime?' So then Miss Pepperill said Sadie ought not to ask such silly questions, and she gave her a black mark. But I saw her laughing behind her spectacles!"

"My! but Tess is the observant kid," said Neale, laughing. "She laughed behind her spectacles, did she?"

"Yes. I know when she laughs, no matter how cross her voice sounds,"

declared Tess, confidently. "If you look right through her spectacles you'll see her eyes jumping. But I guess she's afraid to let us all see that she feels pleasant."

"She's afraid to spoil her discipline, I suppose," said Ruth. "But if ever I teach school I hope I can govern my scholars by making them love me--not through fear."

"Why, of course they'll all fall in love with you, Ruthie!" cried Agnes, with a.s.surance. "Who wouldn't? But that old Pepperpot is another proposition."

"Perhaps she is a whole lot better than she appears," Ruth said mildly.

"And I don't think we ought to call her 'Pepperpot.' Tess certainly has found her blind side."

"Ah, of course! Tess is like you," rejoined Agnes. "She would disarm a wild tiger."

"Oh! oh!" cried Neale, hearing this remark--and certainly what Agnes said was wilder than any tiger! "How would you go to work to disarm a tiger, Aggie? Never knew they had arms."

"Oh, Mr. Smartie!"

"I don't know how smart I am," said Neale. "I was setting here thinking----"

"You mean you were _sitting_," snapped Agnes. "You're neither a hen nor a mason."

"Huh! who said I was?" asked Neale.

"Why," returned the girl, "a hen _sets_ on eggs, and a mason _sets_ the stone in a wall, for instance. You _sit_ on that seat, I should hope."

"Oh, cricky! Get ap, Dobbin and Dewlap! What do you know about Aggie's turning critic all of a sudden?" cried Neale.

"Alas for our learning!" chuckled Ruth. "A hen _sets_ only in colloquial language. To a purist she always _sits_--according to my English lesson of yesterday.