"He hummed and hawed; but he done it. He axed me was I havin' a hard time meetin' the int'rest on my mortgage, an' I told him the trewth.

When the mortgage come due that year he come 'round and offered to let me have the money at a cheaper rate than I'd been payin', an' all the time I wanted. Ye see, that was a cheap way of gittin' a reperation for bein' honest, after all."

"And didn't you see the strawberry mark after that?" sighed Agnes.

"Nope. Nor they never called me 'Strawberry Bob,' though I've been raisin' more berries than most folks in this locality, ever since,"

said Bob Buckham.

"Oh, Mr. Buckham!" exclaimed Agnes. "I ought to be called 'Strawberry Agnes'!"

"Heh? What for?" asked the startled farmer.

"Because I stole berries! I stole them from you! Last May!" gulped the girl. "You know when those girls raided your field? I was one of them. I was the first one over the fence and picked the first berry. I--I'm awfully sorry; but I really didn't think how wrong it was at the time.

And I wish I'd come to you and told you before, instead of waiting until the princ.i.p.al of our school--Mr. Marks--and everybody, knew about it."

"Sho, honey!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham, softly. "Was you one o' them gals?

I'd no idee. Wal! say no more about it. What you took didn't break me,"

and he laughed. "And I won't tell n.o.body," he added, patting Agnes'

shoulder.

As Agnes dried her eyes before joining her sisters and Neale O'Neil at the door, she thought that it was rather unnecessary for the farmer to make that promise. When he had caused the list of girls' names to be sent to the school princ.i.p.al, he had a.s.sured her punishment.

While Bob Buckham was saying to himself: "Now, that's a leetle gal after my own heart. She's a hull sight nicer than that other one. And she's truly repentant, too."

CHAPTER XII

TEA WITH MRS. ELAND

Neale was right. At the supper table at the old Corner House that night (the Sat.u.r.day night supper was always a gala affair) Mrs. MacCall asked, anxiously:

"What's the matter with you, boy? Are you sick?"

"Oh, no, Mrs. MacCall. Do I look sick?" responded the white-haired boy, startled.

"Must be somethin' the matter with you," said the housekeeper, with conviction. "Otherwise you wouldn't stop at only two helpings of beans and only four fishcakes. I'll have to speak to Mr. Con Murphy," she added grimly. "He'd better see that you have a good course of jalap.

You're getting puny."

Uncle Rufus chuckled unctiously from the background. "Dat boy," he murmured, "ain't sickenin' none. He done et a peck o' chestnuts, I reckon, already."

In spite of Neale's "puny" appet.i.te, they had a great chestnut roast that evening. Eva Larry and Myra Stetson came in unexpectedly, and the Corner House girls had a very hilarious time. Neale was the only boy present; but he was rather used, by this time, to playing squire to "a whole raft of girls."

"And, oh, girls," cried the news-bearer, Eva, "what do you think? The School Board has voted to let us give _The Carnation Countess_. I heard it to-day. It's straight. The parts will be given out this next week.

And, oh! poor us!"

"Miss Lederer said we would have quite important parts in the play,"

Ruth said complacently.

"And _we_ can only look on," wailed Myra Stetson, quite as lugubriously as Eva.

"And I'm going to be a bee--I'm going to be a bee!" Dot danced around the table singing this refrain.

"I hope you won't be such a noisy one," Tess said admonishingly. "You're worse than a b.u.mblebee, Dot Kenway."

Agnes really felt too bad to say anything for a minute or two. It was true she felt better in her heart since she had confessed to Mr. Bob Buckham; but the fact that she could not act in the musical play was as keen a disappointment as lively, ambitious Agnes Kenway had ever suffered.

For once Eva Larry's news was exact. It was announced to all grades of the Milton Public Schools on Monday morning that _The Carnation Countess_ was to be produced at the Opera House, probably during the week preceding Christmas, and all cla.s.ses were to have an opportunity of helping in the benefit performance.

A certain company of professional players, headed by a capable manager and musical director, were to take charge of the production, train the children when a.s.sembled, and arrange the stage setting. Half the proceeds of the entertainment were to go to the Milton Women's and Children's Hospital--an inst.i.tution in which everybody seemed now to be interested.

The fact that a certain little girl named Tess Kenway, had really set the ball of interest in motion, was quite forgotten, save by a few. As for the next to the youngest Corner House girl, she never troubled her sweet-tempered little self about it. "Oh! I'm so glad!" she sighed, with satisfaction. "Now my Mrs. Eland can stay."

"What's that you say, Theresa?" Miss Pepperill's sharp voice demanded.

Tess repeated her expression of grat.i.tude.

"Humph!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the red-haired teacher. "So you are still interested in Mrs. Eland, are you? Have you seen her again?"

"I am going to take tea with her this afternoon," said Tess, eagerly.

"So is my sister, Dot."

"You don't know if she has found _her_ sister yet?" asked Miss Pepperill, but more to herself than as though she expected a reply. "No!

of course not."

Tess hurried to meet Dot after school. She found her sister at the girls' gate of the primary department, hugging the Alice-doll (of course, in a brand new cloak) and listening with wide-eyed interest to the small, impish, black-haired boy who was talking earnestly to her.

"And then I shall run away and sail the rollin' billers," he declared.

"I hope they won't find old Pepperpot after I tie her to her chair--not--not from Friday afternoon till Monday mornin', when they open school again. That's what I hope. And by that time I can sail clean around the Cape of Good Hope to the Cannibal Islands, I guess."

"Oh-ee!" gasped Dot. "And suppose the cannibals eat you, Sammy Pinkney?

What would your mother say?"

"She'd be sorry, I guess," said Sammy, darkly. "And so would my pop. But shucks!" he added quickly. "Pirates never get eat by cannibals. They're too smart."

"That's all you know about it, Sammy Pinkney!" said Tess, sternly, breaking in upon the boasting of the scapegrace, who dearly loved an audience. "We met a man this summer that knew all about pirates--or _said_ he did; didn't we, Dot?"

"Oh, yes. The clam-man," the smallest Corner House girl agreed. "And he had a wooden leg."

"Did he get it bein' a pirate?" demanded Sammy.

"He got it fighting pirates," Tess said firmly. "But the pirates got it worse. They got their legs mowed off."

"We-ell. Huh! I guess it would be fun to have a wooden leg, at that,"

the boy stoutly declared. "Anyway, a feller with a wooden leg wouldn't have growin' pains in it; and I have 'em awful when I go to bed nights, in _my_ legs."

As the little girls went on to the hospital, Dot suddenly felt some hesitancy about going, after all. "You know, Tess, they do such _awful_ things to folks in horsepistols!"