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CHAPTER XVII
THE MYSTERIOUS LETTER

"You scared her," declared Agnes to Neale, on the way home from the party.

"Scared who?" demanded the boy, with apparent innocence.

"Trix."

"What if I did? I scared a lot of them."

"But you scared her worse than all the rest," Agnes said. "She was crying in the bedroom upstairs. Lucy told me."

"Crying because she couldn't get that five-dollar gold piece," chuckled Neale. "I wish I could believe they were tears of repentance."

"Who made you a judge, Neale O'Neil?" asked Ruth, with asperity.

"I'm not. Never was in politics," grinned the boy.

"Smartie!" said Agnes.

"Trix was judged by her own conscience," Neale added soberly. "I never said a word to her about that letter."

"What letter do you mean?" demanded Ruth.

But Neale shut his lips on that. When Ruth was not by, however, he admitted to Agnes that he had borrowed from Mr. Marks the letter that gentleman had received in reference to the strawberry raid. Neale was going to show it to Mr. Bob Buckham.

"I told Mr. Marks there was some funny business about it. I knew Mr. Buckham never intended to report you girls to the principal. He didn't even know your names. Mr. Marks told me to find out about it and report to him. He knows that I once worked for Bob Buckham and that he's a friend of mine."

"Oh, Neale!" groaned Agnes. "That won't help me."

"Help you to what?"

"To get a chance to act in the play," sighed the girl. "I did take the berries! So did the other girls. We deserve our punishment. Mr. Marks won't change his mind."

But Neale was not altogether sure of that. There were things happening just then which pointed to several changes in the character parts of The Carnation Countess. It was being discovered by the director and stage manager that many of the characters should be recast. Some of the girls and boys to whom the parts had been allotted could not possibly compass them.

This was particularly plain in the case of Innocent Delight and some others of the female rôles. Some of the very brightest girls in the high school were debarred from taking part in the play because of Mr. Marks' ruling against the first basket ball team and some of their friends.

Neale O'Neil determined to see Mr. Bob Buckham as soon as possible. Another rehearsal would occur on this Saturday afternoon; so Friday evening it was arranged that the interests of the Corner House girls should be divided for one Saturday, at least.

Tess and Dot were going to the hospital in the forenoon. Uncle Rufus had coaxed many fall flowers into late blooming this year and the little girls were to carry great bunches of asters and garden-grown chrysanthemums to decorate the children's ward for Thanksgiving, which came the very next Thursday.

Ruth had shopping to do and must confer with Mr. Howbridge about a Thanksgiving treat for the Meadow Street tenants. "A turkey for each family – and perhaps vegetables," she declared. "So many of them are foreigners. They have learned to celebrate our Fourth of July – why not our Thanksgiving?"

Therefore, it was easy for Neale and Agnes to obtain permission to drive out to Strawberry Farm. Neale got a horse and runabout from the stableman for whom he occasionally drove, and Agnes was proud, indeed, when she came out in her furs and pretty new hat, with the fur-topped boots she had just purchased, and stepped into the carriage beside her friend.

Tom Jonah looked longingly after them from the yard, but Agnes shook her head. "Not to-day, old fellow," she told the good old dog. "We're going to travel too fast for you," for the quick-stepping horse was anxious to be on the road.

They departed amid the cheers of the whole family – and Sammy Pinkney, who threw a big cabbage-stalk after them for good luck and yelled his derisive compliments.

"Fresh kid!" muttered Neale.

"I'd like to spank that boy," sighed Agnes. "There never was so bad a boy since the world began, I believe!"

"I expect that's what the neighbors said about little Cain and Abel," chuckled Neale, recovering his good-nature at once.

"Well," said Agnes, "Sammy's worse than little Tommy Rooney, who ran away from Bloomingsburg to kill Indians."

"Did he kill any?" asked Neale.

"Not here in Milton," Agnes said, laughing. "But he came near getting drowned in the canal."

They drove on by the road that led past Lycurgus Billet's. The tumbled-down house looked just as forlorn as ever, its broken windows stuffed with old hats and gunny-sacks and the like, its broken steps a menace to the limbs of those who went in and out.

Mrs. Lycurgus was picking up chips around the chopping-block and was not averse to stopping for a chat. "No, Lycurgus ain't here," she drawled. "He's gone huntin'. This yere's the first day the law's off'n deer an' Lycurgus 'lows ter git his share of deer-meat. He knows where there's a lick," and she chuckled in anticipation of a full larder.

"Sue? Naw, she ain't here nuther. Mrs. Buckham – her that's the invalid – has sorter took a fancy ter Sue. She's been a-stoppin' there at that Strawberry Farm, right smart now.

"You goin' there? Then you'll likely see her. She likes it right well; but she's a wild young 'un. I dunno's she'll stand it for long."

"Don't you miss her?" asked Agnes, as Neale prepared to drive on.

"Miss Sue? My soul!" ejaculated Mrs. Billet, showing a ragged row of teeth in a broad smile. "Dunno how I could miss one young 'un! There's a-plenty others."

At the Buckham farm little Sue Billet was much in evidence. She was tagging right after the old farmer all the time, and it was plain whose companionship it was that made the half-wild child contented away from home.

The farmer was hearty in his greeting, and he insisted that the visitors go right in "to see marm."

"Wipe yer feet on the door-mat," advised the old man. "Me and Sue haster, or else Posy'll put us out. I never did see a gal with sech a mania for cleanin' floors as that Posy gal."

The invalid in her bower of bright-colored wools welcomed Agnes warmly. "Here's my pretty one! I declare you are a cure for sore eyes," she cried. "And how are the sisters? Why didn't they come to-day?"

Neale remained outside to speak with Mr. Buckham for some minutes. The old farmer, with his silver-bowed spectacles on his nose looked hard at the letter Neale had brought.

"Not that I kin read it," he said ruefully, "or could if it was writ in letters of gold. But I kin see it ain't marm's hand of write – no, sir."

"I was very sure of that," Neale said quickly. "Let me read it to you, sir. You see it's written on your own stationery."

"I see that," admitted the farmer. "Oh, yes; I see that."

Neale began:

"'Mr. Curtis G. Marks,

"'Principal Milton High School.

"'Dear Sir: Mr. Robert Buckham wishes to bring to your attention the fact that on May twenty-third last, a party of your girls, including the members of the first basket ball team, on their way home from Fleeting, were delayed by an accident to the car, right beside his strawberry field; and that the girls named below entered the field without permission, and picked and ate a quantity of berries, beside destroying some vines. Mr. Buckham wishes to call your serious attention to the matter and may yet take steps to punish the culprits himself.'"

Then followed the names of all the girls whom Mr. Marks considered it his duty to punish. There was no signature at all to the letter; but it purported to come from the old farmer, and to be written at his instance.

"I dunno as ye kin call it forgery," muttered Mr. Buckham; "but it's blamed mean – that's what it is! It gives me a black eye with these gals, and the gals a black eye with the teacher. Sho! it's a real mean thing to do."

"But who did it?" demanded Neale, earnestly.

"Ya-as! That's the question," returned Mr. Bob Buckham. "If we knowed that – "

"Are you sure we don't know it?"

The old man eyed him contemplatively. "You suspect somebody," he said.

"Well! and so do you," declared the boy, warmly. "Only you've got some evidence, and we haven't."

"Humph!"

"You must know who would have a chance to get your letter paper and write such a letter as that?"

"Humph!" repeated the old man, reflectively.

"I don't know how that girl came to be out here. But you know you saw her – and like enough she spoke of the strawberry raid – and she went in to see Mrs. Buckham – and she saw the writing paper – "

All the time that Neale was drawling out these phrases he was watching the old farmer's grim face keenly for some flicker of emotion. But it was just as expressionless as a face of stone.

"It's fine weather, we're having, Neale," said Mr. Buckham, finally.

At that the boy lost his temper. "I tell you it's a mean shame!" he cried. "Poor Aggie can't act in that old play, and she wants to. And Trix Severn is spoiling the whole show, and she oughtn't to be allowed to. And if she was the cause of making all these other girls get punished, she ought to be shown up."

"Let's see that letter agin, son," said the old man, quietly. He peered at the handwriting intently for a minute. Then he said, with perfectly sober lips but a twinkle in his eye:

"Ye sure marm didn't write it?"

"Just as sure as I can be! I know her handwriting," cried Neale. "You're fooling."

"So all handwriting don't look alike, heh?" was the farmer's final comment, and he returned the letter to the boy's care.

Neale looked startled for a moment. Then he folded the letter carefully and put it away in his pocket. On the way home he said to Agnes:

"Say, Aggie!"

"What is it?"

"Can you get me a sample of Trix Severn's handwriting?"

"What?" gasped Agnes.

"Just something she's written – a note, or an exercise, or something."

Agnes stared at him in growing horror. "Neale O'Neil!" she cried.

"Well?" he demanded gruffly.

"You're going to try to put that letter upon her – you are going to try to prove that she made all this trouble."

"Well! what if?" he asked, still without looking at her.

"Never! Never in this world will I let you do it," said Agnes, firmly.

"Huh! And I was only trying to see if there wasn't some way out of the mess for you," said Neale, as though offended.

"I wouldn't want to get out of it – even if you could help me – at such a price. Because she may have been a tale-bearer, do you think I'd be one?"

"Not even to get a chance to act in The Carnation Countess?" asked Neale, with a sudden smile.

"No! And – and that wouldn't help me, anyway!" she added, quite despairingly.

CHAPTER XVIII
MISS PEPPERILL AND THE GRAY LADY

Tess and Dot Kenway set off for the hospital in good season that Saturday morning, their arms laden with great bunches of flowers, all wrapped about with layers of tissue paper, for the November air was keen.

On the corner of High Street, the wind being somewhat blusterous, Dot managed to run into somebody; but she clung to the flowers nevertheless.

"Hoity-toity!" ejaculated a rather sharp voice. "Where are you going, young lady?"

"To – to the horsepistol," declared the muffled voice of the matter-of-fact Dot.

"Hospital! hospital!" gasped Tess, in horror. "This is Miss Pepperill."

"Ah! So it is Theresa and her little sister," said the teacher. "Humph! A child who mispronounces the word so badly as that will never get to the institution itself without help. Let me carry those flowers, Dorothy. I am going past the Women's and Children's Hospital myself."

"Thank her, Dot!" hissed Tess. "It's very kind of her."

"You can carry the flowers, Miss Pepperill," said the smallest Corner House girl, "if you want to. But I want Mrs. Eland to know I brought some as well as Tess."

The red-haired lady laughed – rather a short, brusk laugh, that might have been a cough.

"So you are going to see your Mrs. Eland, are you, Theresa?" she asked her pupil.

"Yes, Miss Pepperill. We always see Mrs. Eland when we go to the hospital," said Tess. "But we like to see the children, too."

"Yes," said Dot; "there is a boy there with only one arm. Do you suppose they'll grow a new one on him?"

That time Miss Pepperill did laugh in good earnest; but Tess despaired. "Goodness, Dot! they don't grow arms on folks."

"Why not?" demanded the inquisitive Dorothy. "Our teacher was reading to us how new claws grow on lobsters when they lose 'em fighting. But perhaps that boy wasn't fighting when he lost his arm."

"For pity's sake! I should hope not," observed Miss Pepperill. In a minute they came in sight of the hospital, and she added, in her very tartest tone of voice: "I shall go in with you, Theresa. I should like to meet your Mrs. Eland."

"Yes, ma'am," Tess replied dutifully, but Dot whispered:

"I don't like the way she says 'Theresa' to you, Tess. It – it sounds just as though you were going to have a tooth pulled."

Miss Pepperill had stalked ahead with Dot's bunch of flowers. Dot did not much mind having the flowers carried for her; but she did not propose letting anybody at the hospital make a mistake as to who donated that particular bouquet. As they went in she said to the porter, who was quite well acquainted with the two smallest Corner House girls by this time:

"Good morning, Mr. John. We are bringing some flowers for the children's ward, Tess and me. That lady with – with the light hair, is carrying mine."

Fortunately the red-haired school teacher did not hear this observation on the part of Dot.

Half-way down the corridor, Mrs. Eland chanced to come out of one of the offices to meet the school teacher, face to face. "Oh! I beg your pardon," said the little, gray lady – for she dressed in that hue in the house as well as on the street. "Did you wish to see me?"

The matron was small and plump; the teacher was tall and lean. The rosy, pleasant face of Mrs. Eland could not have been put to a greater contrast than with the angular and grim countenance of the bespectacled Miss Pepperill.

The latter seemed, for the moment, confused. She was not a person easily disturbed in any situation, it would seem; but she was almost bashful as the little matron confronted her.

"I – I – Really, are you Mrs. Eland?" stammered the school teacher.

"Yes," said the quietly smiling gray lady.

"I – I have heard Theresa, here, speak so much of you – " She actually fell back upon Tess for support! "Theresa! introduce me to Mrs. Eland," she commanded.

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Eland," said the cordial Tess. "I wanted you to meet Miss Pepperill. You know – she's my teacher."

"Oh! who wanted you to learn the succession of the rulers of England?" said Mrs. Eland, laughing, with a sweet, mellow tone.

"Yes, ma'am. The sovereigns of England," Tess said.

"Of course!" Mrs. Eland added:

 
"'First William, the Norman,
Then William, his son.'"
 

"That old rhyme!" Miss Pepperill said, hastily, recovering herself somewhat. "You taught it to Theresa?"

"I wrote it out for her," confessed Mrs. Eland. "I could never forget it. I learned it when I was a very little girl."

"Indeed?" said Miss Pepperill, almost gasping the ejaculation. "So did I."

"That was some time ago," Mrs. Eland said, in her gentle way. "My mother taught me."

"Oh! did she?" exclaimed the other lady.

"Yes. She was an English woman. She had been a governess herself in England."

"Indeed!" Again the red-haired teacher almost barked the expression. She seemed to labor under some strong emotion. Tess noted the strange change in Miss Pepperill's usual manner as she spoke to the matron.

"I think it must have been my mother who taught me," the teacher said, in the same jerky way. "I'm not sure. Or – perhaps – I picked it up from hearing it taught to somebody else.

 
"'First William, the Norman,
Then William, his son, – '
 

Not easily forgotten when once learned."

"Very true," Mrs. Eland said quietly. "I believe my little sister learned it listening to mother and me saying it over and over."

"Ah! yes," Miss Pepperill observed. "Your sister? I suppose much younger than you?"

"Oh, no; only about four years younger," said Mrs. Eland, sadly. "But I lost her when we were both very young."

"Oh! ah!" was Miss Pepperill's abrupt comment. "Death is sad – very sad," and she shook her head.

At the moment somebody spoke to the matron and called her away. Otherwise she might have stopped to explain that her sister had been actually lost, and that she had no knowledge as to whether she were dead or alive.

The red-haired teacher and the two little Corner House girls went on to the children's ward.

CHAPTER XIX
A THANKSGIVING SKATING PARTY

The rehearsal of The Carnation Countess that afternoon went most dreadfully.

"It really is a shame!" chuckled Neale to Agnes, as he sat beside her for a few minutes after the boys acquitted themselves very well in their part. "It really is a shame," he went on, "what some of you girls can do to a part when it comes to acting. Talk about Hamlet's father being murdered to make a Roman holiday!"

"Hush, you ridiculous boy! That isn't the quotation at all," admonished Agnes.

"No? Well, Hamlet's father was murdered, wasn't he?"

"I prefer to believe him a mythical character," said Agnes, primly.

"At any rate, something as bad will happen to you, Neale O'Neil, if you revile the girls of Milton High," declared Eva Larry, who was near enough to hear the boy's comment. "Oh, dear me! I believe I could make something of that part of Cheerful Grigg, myself. Rose Carey is a regular stick!"

"Hear! hear!" breathed Neale, soulfully. "I'm sorry for Professor Ware."

"Well! he gave them the parts," snapped Eva. "I'm not sorry for him!"

The musical director was a patient man; but he saw the play threatened with ruin by the stupidity of a few. If his voice grew sharp and his manner impatient before the rehearsal was over, there was little wonder.

The choruses, and even the little folks' parts, went splendidly – with snap and vigor. Some of the bigger girls walked through their rôles as though they were in a trance.

"I declare I should expect more animation and a generally better performance from marionettes," cried the despairing professor.

Mr. Marks came in, saw how things were going, and whispered a few words to Professor Ware. The latter fairly threw up his hands.

"I give it up for to-day," he cried. "You all act like a set of puppets. Pray, pray, young ladies! try to get into the spirit of your parts by next Friday. Otherwise, I shall be tempted to recommend that the whole play be given up. We do not want to go before the Milton public and make ourselves ridiculous."

Neale said to Agnes as he walked home with her: "Why don't you learn the part of Innocent Delight? I bet you couldn't do it so much better than Trix, after all."

She looked at him with scorn. "Learn it?" she repeated. "I know it by heart – and all the other girl's parts, too. I've acted them all out in my room before the mirror." She laughed a little ruefully. "Lots of good it does me, too! And Ruth says I will have to sleep in another room, all by myself, if I don't stop it.

"If I couldn't do the part of Innocent Delight better than Trix Severn – "

She left the remainder of the observation to his imagination.

The Thanksgiving recess was to last only from Wednesday afternoon till the following Monday morning. Friday and Saturday would be taken up with rehearsals – mostly because of the atrociously bad acting of some of the girls.

The holiday itself, however, was free. Dinner was to be a joyous affair at the old Corner House. There were but two guests expected: Mr. Howbridge and Neale. Mr. Howbridge, their uncle's executor, and the Kenway sisters' guardian, was a bachelor, and he felt a deep interest in the Corner House girls. Of course, Agnes begged to have Neale come.

In the Stower tenements in Meadow Street there was great rejoicing, too. Mr. Howbridge's own automobile had taken around the Thanksgiving baskets and the lawyer's clerk delivered them and made a brief speech at each presentation. The Corner House girls could not attend, for they were too busy in school and (at least, three of them) with their parts in the play. But Sadie Goronofsky reported the affair to Tess in these expressive words:

"Say! you'd oughter seen my papa's wife and the kids. You'd think they'd never seen anything to eat before – an' we always has a goose Passover week. My! it was fierce! But there was so much in that basket that it made 'em all fair nutty. You'd oughter seen 'em!"

Mrs. Kranz, the "delicatessen lady," as Dot called her, and Joe Maroni, helped fill the baskets. They were the two "rich tenants" on the Stower estate, and the example of the Corner House girls in generosity had its good effect upon the lonely German woman and the voluble Italian fruiterer.

There were other needy people whom the Corner House girls remembered at this season with substantial gifts. Petunia Blossom, and her shiftless husband and growing family, looked to "gran'pap's missus" for their Thanksgiving fowl. And this year Seneca Sprague came in for a share of the Corner House bounty.

Since the fatal day when Billy Bumps had secured a share of the prophet's generous thatch, Ruth had felt she owed Seneca something. The boys plagued him as he walked the streets in his flapping linen duster and broken straw hat; and older people were unkind enough to make fun of him.

Seneca followed the scriptural command to the Jews regarding swine – and more, for he ate no meat of any kind. But the plump and luscious pig was indeed an abomination to Seneca.

One day when Ruth went to market she saw a crowd of the market loiterers teasing Seneca Sprague, the man having ventured among them to peddle his tracts.

The girl saw a smeary-aproned young butcher slip up behind the old man and drop a pig's tail into one of the pockets of his flapping duster.

To the bystanders it was a harmless joke; to Seneca, Ruth knew, it would mean infamy and contamination. He would be months purging his conscience of the stain of "touching the unclean thing," as he expressed it.

The girl went up to Seneca and spoke to him. She had a heavy basket of provisions and she asked the prophet to carry it home for her, which he did with good grace.

When they arrived at the old Corner House Ruth told him if he would remove the linen coat she would sew up a tear in the back for him; and in this way she smuggled the "porker's appendage," as Neale O'Neil called it, out of the prophet's pocket.

"And you ought to see the inside of that shack of his down on Bimberg's wharf," Neale O'Neil said. "I got a peep at it one day. You know it's an old office Bimberg used to use before he moved up town, and it's attached to his store-shed, and at the far end.

"Seneca's got a little stove, and a cupboard, a cot to sleep on, a chair to sit in, and the walls are lined with bookshelves filled with old musty books."

"Books!" exclaimed Agnes. "Does he read?"

"Why, in his way, he's quite erudite," declared Neale, smiling. "He reads Josephus and the Apocrypha, and believes them quite as much inspired as the rabbinical books of the Old Testament, I believe. Most of his other books relate to the prophetical writings of the old patriarchs.

"He believes that the Pilgrims were descended from the lost tribes of Israel and that God allowed them to people this country and raise up a nation which should be a refuge and example to all the peoples of the earth."

"Why! I think that is really a wonderful thought," Ruth said.

"He's strong on patriotism; and his belief in regard to the divine direction of George Washington does nobody any harm. If everybody believed as Seneca does, we would all have a greater love of country, that's sure."

Ruth sent down to the little hut on the river dock a basket of such good things as she knew Seneca Sprague would appreciate.

"I'd love to send him warm underwear," she sighed.

"And a cap and mittens," Agnes put in. "He gives me the shivers when I see him pass along this cold weather, with his duster flapping."

"Thank goodness he has put on socks and wears carpet slippers," said Ruth. "He believes it is unhealthy to wear many clothes. And he is healthy enough – goodness knows!"

"But clothes are awfully comfortable," said the luxury-loving Dot.

"Right you are, Dottums," agreed Agnes. "And I'd rather be comfortable than so terribly healthy."

The weather had become intensely cold during the past fortnight. Steady frost had chained the river and ponds. There had been no snow, but there was fine skating by Thanksgiving.

On the morning of the holiday the two older Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil set off to meet a party of their school friends for a skating frolic on the canal and river. They met at the Park Lock, and skated down the solidly frozen canal to where it debouched into the river.

Milton young folks were out in full force on this Thanksgiving morning, despite the keen wind blowing from the northwest. Jack Frost nipped fingers and toes; but there were huge bonfires burning here and there along the bank, and at these the skaters could go ashore to warm themselves when they felt too cold.

River traffic, of course, was over for the season. The docks were for the most part deserted. Some reckless small boys built a fire of shavings and old barrels right on Bimberg's dock.

When the first tar-barrel began to crackle, the sparks flew. Older skaters saw the danger; but when they rushed to put the fire out, it was beyond control. The Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil were among the first to see the danger. Seneca Sprague's shack was then afire.

"Never mind. The old man's up town," cried one boy. "If it burns up it won't be much loss."

"And it will burn before the fire department gets here," said one of the girls.

"Poor Seneca! I expect his poor possessions are treasures to him," said Ruth.

"Cracky!" ejaculated Neale, suddenly, as the flames mounted higher. "What about the poor old duffer's books?"

"Oh, Neale!" gasped Ruth. "And they mean so much to him."

"Pshaw!" observed one of the other boys. "They're not really worth anything, are they?"

"Whether they are or not, they are valuable to Seneca," Ruth repeated.

"Well, goodness!" was the ejaculation of a third boy. "I wouldn't risk going into that shack if they were worth a million. See! the whole end of it is ablaze!"