"Get out, you beast!" shouted the "prophet," but using most unprophetical language. "Ow! ow! ouch!"

For Billy had no idea of losing what he had already masticated. He pulled so hard that he drew Mr. Sprague over on his back, where he lay with his legs kicking in the air, wild yells of surprise and pain issuing from him.

Over the fence at the rear of the Corner House premises bobbed a flaxen head, and a boyish voice shouted: "What's the matter, girls?"

"Oh, Neale O'Neil!" shrieked Dot. "Do come! Quick! Billy b.u.mps is eating up Mr. Sneaker Sp'ague--and he's beginning at his hair."

CHAPTER IV

THE BASKET BALL TEAM IN TROUBLE

Billy b.u.mps backed away in time to escape the vigorous blow Neale O'Neil aimed at him with the stick he had picked up. But the old goat had managed to tear loose some of the hair on one side of the odd, old fellow's head, and now stood contemplating the angry and excited Sprague, with the hair hanging out of his mouth and mingling with his own long beard.

"Shorn of my locks! shorn of my locks! Samson has lost his glory and strength--yea, verily!" cried the owner of the hair, mournfully. "Yea, how hath the mighty fallen and the people imagined a vain thing! And if there were anything here hard enough to throw at that old goat!"

Thus getting down to a more practical and modern form of language, Seneca Sprague looked wrathfully around for a club or a rock, nothing less being sufficiently hard to suit him.

"Oh, you mustn't!" cried Dot. "Poor Billy b.u.mps doesn't know any better.

Why, once he chewed up my Alice-doll's best dress. And _I_ didn't hit him for it!"

A comparison of a doll's dress with his own hair did not please Mr.

Sprague much. He shook his now ragged head, from which the lock of hair had been torn so roughly. Billy b.u.mps considered this a challenge and, lowering his horns, suddenly charged the despoiled prophet.

"Drat the beast!" yelled Seneca, forgetting his Scriptural language entirely; and leaped into the air just in time to make a pa.s.sage for Billy b.u.mps between his long legs.

Neale, for laughter, could not help.

Slam! went Billy's horns against the end of the hen-house. Mr. Sprague was not there to catch the goat on the rebound, for, leaving his bag of apples, he rushed for the side gate and got out upon Willow Street without much regard for the order of his going, voicing prophecies this time that had only to do with Billy b.u.mps' immediate future.

The disturbance brought Ruth and Agnes running from the house, but only in time to see the wrathful Seneca Sprague, his linen duster flapping behind him, as he disappeared along Willow Street. When Ruth heard about Billy b.u.mps' banquet, she sent the bag of apples to Seneca Sprague's little shanty which he occupied, down on the river dock.

"Of all the ridiculous things a goat ever did, that is the most ridiculous!" exclaimed Agnes.

"There's more than one hair in the b.u.t.ter this time," repeated Neale O'Neil, with laughter.

"I can't laugh, even at that stale joke," sighed Agnes.

"What's the matter, Aggie?" demanded Neale. "Have you soured on the world completely?"

"I feel as though I had," confessed Agnes, her sweet eyes vastly troubled and her red lips in a pout. "What do you think, Neale?"

"A whole lot of things," returned the boy. "What do you want me to think?"

"Mr. Smartie! But tell me: Have you heard anything about our basket ball team being set back? Eva told me she'd heard Mr. Marks was dreadfully displeased at something we'd done and that he said we shouldn't win the pennant."

"Not win the pennant?" cried Neale, aghast. "Why, you girls have got it cinched!"

"Not if Mr. Marks declares all the games we won last spring forfeited. I think he's too, too mean!" cried Agnes.

"Oh, he wouldn't do that!" urged Neale.

"She says he is going to."

"Eve Larry doesn't always get things straight," said Neale, comfortingly. "But what does he do it for?"

"I don't know. I'm sure _I_ haven't done anything."

"Of course not!" chuckled her boy friend, looking at her rather roguishly. "Who was it proposed that raid on old Buckham's strawberry patch that time, coming home from Fleeting?"

"Oh! he couldn't know about that," cried Agnes, actually turning pale at the suggestion.

"I don't know," Neale said slowly. "Trix Severn was in your crowd then, and she'd tell anything if she got mad."

"And she's mad all right," groaned Agnes.

"I believe she is--with you Corner House girls," added Neale O'Neil.

"She'd be telling on herself--the mean thing!" snapped Agnes.

"But she is not on the team. She was along only as a rooter. The electric car broke down alongside of Buckham's strawberry patch. Wasn't that it?"

"Uh-huh," admitted Agnes. "And the berries _did_ look so tempting."

"You girls got into Buckham's best berries," chuckled Neale. "I heard he was quite wild about it."

"We didn't take many. And I really didn't think about it's being stealing," Agnes said slowly. "We just did it for a lark."

"Of course. 'Didn't mean to' is an old excuse," retorted the boy.

"Well, Mr. Buckham couldn't have known about it then," cried Agnes. "I don't believe Mr. Marks heard of it through him. If he had, why not before this time, after months have gone by?"

"I know. It's all blown over and forgotten, when up it pops again.

'Murder will out,' they say. But you girls only murdered a few strawberries. It looks to me," added Neale O'Neil, "as though somebody was trying to get square."

"Get square with _whom_?" demanded Agnes.

"Well--you were all in it, weren't you?"

"All the team?"

"Yes."

"I suppose so. But Trix and some of the others picked and ate quite as many berries as we did. The girls that went over to Fleeting to root for us were all in it, too."

"I know," Neale said. "If the farmer had been sure who you were, or any of the electric car men had told---- Had the car all to yourselves, didn't you?"