"Why, no, Tess--is that so?" he said, staring at her. "What for?"

"Because there is no money to pay Mrs. Eland. And now she won't have any home."

"Mrs. Eland?"

"The matron, you know. And she's such a nice lady," pursued Tess. "She taught me the sovereigns of England."

Mr. Stetson might have laughed. He was frequently vastly amused by the queer sayings and doings of the two youngest Corner House girls, as he often told his wife and Myra. But on this occasion Tess was so serious that to laugh at her would have hurt her feelings. Mr. Stetson expressed his regret regarding the calamity which had overtaken Mrs. Eland and the hospital. He had never thought of the inst.i.tution before, and said to his wife that he supposed they "might spare a trifle toward such a good cause."

Tess carried her tale of woe into another part of the town when she and Dot went with their dolls to call on Mrs. Kranz and Maria Maroni, on Meadow Street, where the Stower tenement property was located.

"Did you know about the Women's and Children's Hospital being shut up, Mrs. Kranz?" Tess asked that huge woman, who kept the neatest and cleanest of delicatessen and grocery stores possible. "And Mrs. Eland can't stay there."

"Ach! you dond't tell me!" exclaimed the German woman. "Ist dodt so? And vor vy do dey close de hospital yedt? Aind't it a goot vun?"

"I think it must be a very good one," Tess said soberly, "for Mrs. Eland is an awfully nice lady, and she is the matron. She taught me the sovereigns of England. I'll recite them for you." This she proceeded to do.

"Very goot! very goot!" announced Mrs. Kranz. "Maria can't say that yedt."

Maria Maroni, the very pretty Italian girl (she was about Agnes' age) who helped Mrs. Kranz in the store, laughed good-naturedly. "I guess I knew them once," she said. "But I have forgotten. I never like any history but 'Merican history, and that of Italy."

"Ach! you foreigners are all alike," Mrs. Kranz protested, considering herself a bred-in-the-bone American, having lived in the country so long.

Although she was scolding her brisk and pretty little a.s.sistant most of the time, she really loved Maria Maroni very dearly. Maria's mother and father--with their fast growing family--lived in the cellar of the same building in which was Mrs. Kranz's shop. Joe Maroni, as was shown by the home-made sign at the cellar door, sold

ISE COLE WOOD VGERTABLS

and was a smiling, voluble Italian, in a velveteen suit and cap, with gold rings in his ears, who never set his bright, black eyes upon one of the Corner House girls but he immediately filled a basket with his choicest fruit as a gift for "da leetla padrona," as he called Ruth Kenway. He had an offering ready for Tess and Dot to take home when they reappeared from Mrs. Kranz's back parlor.

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Maroni," Tess said, while Dot allowed one of the smaller Maronis to hold the Alice-doll for a blissful minute. "I know Ruthie will be delighted."

"Si! si! _dee_-lighted!" exclaimed Joe, showing all his very white teeth under his brigand's mustache. "The leetla T'eressa ees seek?"

"Oh, no, Mr. Maroni!" denied Tess, with a sigh. "I am very well. But I feel very bad in my mind. They are going to close the Women's and Children's Hospital and my friend, Mrs. Eland, who is the matron, will have no place to go."

Joe looked a little puzzled, for although Maria and some of her brothers and sisters went to school, their father did not understand or speak English very well. Tess patiently explained about the good work the hospital did and why Mrs. Eland was in danger of losing her position.

"Too bad-a! si! si!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the sympathetic Italian. "We mak-a da good mon' now. We geev somet'ing to da hospital for da poor leetla children--_si! si!_"

"Oh, will you, Mr. Maroni?" cried Tess. "Ruth says there ought to be a fund started for the hospital. I'll tell her you'll give to it."

"Sure! you tell-a leetla padrona. Joe geeve--sure!"

"Oh, Dot! we can int'rest lots of folks--just as Ruth said," Tess declared, as the two little girls wended their way homeward. "We'll talk to everybody we know about the hospital and Mrs. Eland."

To this end Tess even opened the subject with Uncle Rufus' daughter, Petunia Blossom, who chanced to be at the old Corner House when Tess and Dot arrived, delivering the clothes which she washed each week for the Kenways.

Petunia Blossom was an immensely fat negress--and most awfully black.

Uncle Rufus often said: "How come Pechunia so brack is de mysteriest mystery dat evah was. She done favah none o' ma folkses, nor her mammy's. She harks back t' some ol' antsistah dat was suttenly mighty brack--yaas'm!"

"I dunno as I kin spar' anyt'ing fo' dis hospital, honey," Petunia said, seriously, when Tess broached the subject. "It's a-costin' me a lot t'

keep up ma dues wid de Daughters of Miriam."

"What's the Daughters of Miriam, Petunia?" asked Agnes, who chanced to overhear this conversation on the back porch. "Is it a lodge?"

"Hit's mo' dan a lodge, Miss Aggie," proclaimed Petunia, with pride.

"It's a beneficial ordah--yaas'm!"

"And what benefit do you derive from it?" queried Agnes.

"Why, I doesn't git nottin' f'om it yet awhile, honey," said Petunia, unctiously. "But w'en I's daid, I gits one hunderd an' fifty dollahs.

Same time, dey's 'bleeged t' tend ma funeral."

"Dat brack woman suah is a flickaty female," grumbled Uncle Rufus, when he heard Agnes repeating the story of Petunia's "benefit" to the family at dinner that night. When n.o.body but the immediate family was present at table, Uncle Rufus a.s.sumed the privilege of discussing matters with the girls. "She's allus wastin' her money on sech things. Dere, she has got t' die t' git her benefit out'n dem Daughters of Miriam. She's mighty flickaty."

"What does 'flickaty' mean, Uncle Rufus, if you please?" asked Dot, hearing a new word, and rather liking the sound of it.

"Why, chile, dat jes' mean _flickaty_--das all," returned the old butler, chuckling. "Dah ain't nottin' in de langwidge what kin explanify dat wo'd. Nor dah ain't no woman, brack or w'ite, mo' flickaty dan dat same Pechunia Blossom."

CHAPTER V

THE STONE IN THE POOL

"Great oaks from little acorns grow." Tess Kenway, with her little, serious effort, had no idea what she was starting for the benefit of Mrs. Eland, and incidentally for the neglected Women's and Children's Hospital. And this benefit was not of the unpractical character for which Petunia Blossom was paying premiums into the treasury of the Daughters of Miriam!

Tess' advertis.e.m.e.nt, wherever she went, of the hospital's need, called the attention of many heretofore thoughtless people to it. Through Mr.

Stetson and Mrs. Kranz many people were reminded of the inst.i.tution that had already done such good work. They said, "It would be a shame to close that hospital. Something ought to be done about it."

Tess Kenway's word was like a stone dropped into a placid pool. The water stirred by the plunge of the stone spreads in wavelets in an ever widening circle till it compa.s.ses the entire pool. So with the little Corner House girl's earnest speech regarding the hospital's need of funds.

Tess and Dot did not see the woman in the gray cloak again--not just then, at least; but they thought about her a great deal, and talked about her, too. A bag of the pippins went to the hospital by Neale O'Neil's friendly hand, addressed to Mrs. Eland, and with the names of the two youngest Corner House girls inside.

"I do hope she likes apples," Tess said. "I'm _so_ much obliged to her for the sovereigns of England."

Tess wondered, too, if she should take some of the apples to school that first day of the fall term to present to Miss Pepperill. Dot took _her_ teacher some. Dot was to have the same teacher this term that she had had the last. Tess finally decided that the sharp and red-haired Miss Pepperill might think that she, Tess, was trying to bribe her to forget the sovereigns of England.

"And I am quite sure I know them perfectly. That is, if she doesn't fuss me too much when she asks the question," Tess said to Ruth, with whom she discussed the point. "I won't take her the apples, I guess, until after I have recited the sovereigns."

Despite the declaration that she had learned perfectly the rhyme Mrs.

Eland had written out for her, Tess Kenway went into school that first day of the term feeling very sober indeed. Many of the girls in her cla.s.s looked sober, too. Pupils who had graduated from Miss Pepperill's cla.s.s had reported the red-haired lady as being "awfully strict."

Indeed, before the scholars were quite settled at their desks, they had a proof of Miss Pepperill's discipline. Some of the boys in Tess' cla.s.s had reputations to maintain (or thought they had) for "not bein' scart of teacher." Sammy Pinkney often boasted to wondering and wide-eyed little girls that "no old teacher could make him a fraid cat."

"What's your name--you with the black hair and warts on your hands?"

demanded the new teacher, sharply and suddenly.