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CHAPTER V – DOT’S AWFUL ADVENTURE

Altogether that first run in their automobile was pronounced a jolly success by the Corner House girls. The return journey from Marchenell Grove was without incident.

“If we had only become acquainted with Mrs. Heard the trip would have been more than worth while,” declared Ruth, who was seldom as enthusiastic about a new acquaintance as she was about the aunt of the county surveyor. “She is coming to see us soon.”

Agnes was more interested in another thing, and she confided in Neale.

“Do you really suppose, Neale,” she asked, “that the awful fellow who spoke to Ruth is one of those who stole Mr. Collinger’s auto?”

“Saleratus Joe?” chuckled the boy.

“Hasn’t he any other name? It sounds like – like the Wild West in the movies, or something like that.”

“They only call him that for fun,” explained Neale O’Neil. “And whether he helped get away with the surveyor’s machine or not, I’m sure I don’t know.”

“But can’t you guess?” cried Agnes, in exasperation.

“What’s the use of guessing?” returned her boy chum. “That won’t get you anywhere. You’re a poor detective, Aggie.”

“Don’t make fun,” complained Agnes, who was very much excited about the automobile robbery. They had just got their car, and she had longed for it so deeply that she was beginning to be worried for fear something would happen to it.

“Shut Tom Jonah into the garage at night,” Neale suggested. “I warrant no thieves will take it.”

Mr. Howbridge, while he was about it, had had a cement block garage built on the rear of the Stower premises facing Willow Street, for the housing of the Corner House girls’ motor car.

“Mr. Collinger’s auto was stolen right on the street,” said Agnes, doubtfully.

“That’s the worst of these flivvers,” retorted Neale, with a grin. “People are apt to come along and pick ’em up absent-mindedly and go off with them. Say! have you heard the latest?”

“What about?” asked Agnes, dreamily.

“About the flivver. Do you know what the chickens say when one of ’em goes by?”

“No,” declared the girl.

“Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!” mimicked the boy.

Agnes giggled. Then she said: “But Mr. Collinger’s wasn’t one of those cheap cars. It was a runabout; but it cost him a lot of money.”

“But that freckled-faced young man, Neale —do you suppose he could be the one Mrs. Heard said was seen driving the stolen car away from the court house?”

“Why, how should I know?” demanded Neale. “I’m no seventh son of a seventh son.”

“I wish we had seen a constable out there in the grove and had had him arrested.”

“What for? On what charge?” cried Neale, wonderingly.

“Why, because he spoke to Ruth and me. Then he could be held while his record was looked up. Maybe Mr. Collinger could have recovered his car by that means.”

“Cricky!” ejaculated the boy. “You’ve been reading the police court reports in the newspapers, I believe, Aggie.”

“Well! that’s what they do,” declared the girl, confidently.

“Maybe so. But you couldn’t have had the fellow arrested for speaking to you. You shouldn’t have been around the dance floor if you wanted to escape that. But, perhaps that freckled rascal is one of the thieves, and maybe he can be traced. Mrs. Heard will tell her nephew and he will attend to it – no fear!”

“But it would be just great, Neale, if we could do something toward recovering the car and getting the thieves arrested,” said Agnes who, as Neale often said, if she went into a thing, went into it all over!

They had not much time just then, however, to give to the mystery of the county surveyor’s lost automobile. Final examinations were coming on and the closing of school would be the next week but one.

Even Dot was busy with school work, although she was not very far advanced in her studies; and during these last few days she was released from her classes in the afternoon earlier than the other Corner House girls.

Sometimes she walked toward Meadow Street, which was across town from the Corner House and in a poorer section of Milton, with some of her little school friends before coming home; and so she almost always met Sammy Pinkney loafing along Willow Street on returning.

Sammy did not go to school this term. Scarlet fever had left this would-be pirate so weak and pale that the physician had advised nothing but out-of-doors for him until autumn.

Sammy, in some ways, was a changed boy since his serious illness. He was much thinner and less robust looking, of course; but the changes in him were not all of a physical nature. For one thing, he was not so rough with his near-neighbors, the Corner House girls. They had been very kind to him while he was ill, and his mother was always singing their praises. Besides, the other boys being in school, Sammy was lonely and was only too glad as a usual thing to have even Dot to talk to or play with.

Dot was a little afraid of Sammy, even now, because of his past well-won reputation. And, too, his reiterated desire to be a pirate cast a glamor over his character that impressed the smallest Corner House girl.

One day she met him on Willow Street, some distance from the old Corner House. He was idly watching a man across the street who was moving along the sidewalk in a very odd way indeed.

The Kenways had lived in a very poor part of Bloomingsburg before coming to Milton, and there had been saloons in the neighborhood; but Dot had been very small, and if she had seen such a thing as an intoxicated man she had forgotten it. Near the Corner House there were no saloons, although the city of Milton licensed many of those places. Dot had not before seen a man under the influence of liquor.

This unfortunate was not a poorly dressed man. Indeed, he was rather well appareled and normally might have been a very respectable citizen. But he was staggering from side to side of the walk, his head hanging and his stiff derby hat – by some remarkable power – sticking to his head, although it threatened to fall off at every jerk.

“Why – ee!” gasped the smallest Corner House girl, “what ever is the matter with that poor man, Sammy Pinkney, do you suppose?”

Sammy, trying to wrap his limbs about a fire-plug in emulation of a boa-constrictor, jerked out:

“Brick in his hat!”

“Oh! What?” murmured the puzzled Dot, eyeing the poor man wonderingly and clasping the Alice-doll closer.

Sammy grinned. He was a tantalizing urchin and loved to mystify the innocent Dot.

“He’s carrying a brick in his hat,” he repeated, with daring.

“Why – why – Doesn’t he know it?” demanded the little girl.

“I guess nobody’s told him yet,” chuckled Sammy.

At that moment the intoxicated man just caught his hat from tumbling off by striking it with the palm of one hand and so settling it well down upon his ears again.

“Oh, my!” murmured the startled Dot. “It came pretty near falling out, didn’t it?”

“He, he!” snickered Sammy.

“Do you suppose he wants to carry that brick in his hat?” asked Dot, seriously. “I shouldn’t think he would.”

“He don’t know he’s got it,” said Sammy.

“Why doesn’t somebody tell him?” demanded Dot. “The poor man! He’ll surely fall down.”

Sammy still snickered. Somebody should have spanked Sammy, right then and there!

“I don’t care!” exclaimed Dot, more and more disturbed, “it doesn’t seem nice – not at all. I think you ought to tell him, Sammy.”

“Not me!”

“Well – ” Dot looked all around. There was nobody else in sight just then. Willow Street was quite deserted.

“If you won’t, then I must,” declared the little girl, shouldering the obligation pluckily and starting across the street.

“Aw, Dot! Let him alone,” muttered Sammy.

The young rascal was suddenly startled. He began to wonder what would happen to him if his mother learned that he had been trying to fool Dot Kenway in any such way as this.

“Come back!” he called after her.

“Sha’n’t!” declared Dot, who could be stubborn when she wanted to be.

“Say! that man won’t listen to you,” insisted Sammy.

Dot kept right on. The man had halted, and was clinging to a tree box, his head hanging down. His face was very much flushed and his eyes were glassy.

“But I s’pose,” thought Dot, “if I was carrying a brick in my hat it would make me sick, too.”

“Mister!” she said to the man, stopping in the gutter and looking up at him.

“Huh? What’s matter?” asked the man. His head jerked up and he looked all around to see who had spoken to him.

“Mister,” said Dot, earnestly, “I – I hope you’ll ‘scuse me, but there’s a brick in your hat. Sammy Pinkney says so. And I think if you take it out you’ll feel ever so much better.”

Sammy heard her. He actually grew pale, and, casting a startled glance around him, he ran. He ran all the way home, for he could not imagine what the man would say or do to Dot. Sammy was not a very brave boy.

The unfortunate man looked down at Dot, finally having discovered her whereabouts, with preternatural gravity.

“Say – little girl – say that ’gain, will you?” he said, slowly.

Dot quite innocently repeated it. The man carefully removed his hat and looked into it. Then he turned it over and shook it. Nothing, of course, fell to the ground.

“’Tisn’t there. You fooled yourself. I thought so,” muttered the man.

And then he leaned so far over that he dropped the hat in the gutter.

“You must be dreadful sick,” Dot said to him, her little heart touched by his appearance.

“Yes – that’s it. Sick. That’s it,” he mumbled.

This was a really awful adventure for little Dot Kenway.

“I’m going to get you a glass of water,” she said. “Your face is so red. You are sick, I can see.”

He said nothing, but blinked at her. Perhaps he did not at first quite understand. Dot turned to cross the street toward the store on the corner. Then she turned back.

“Will you please hold my Alice-doll while I go for the water?” she asked the man. “Do be very careful with her – please.”

“Sure!” said the man, good-naturedly.

“You’ll truly, truly be very careful of her?”

“Sure will,” repeated the unfortunate.

So, after she had placed the doll carefully in his arms, the little girl tripped away on her errand of mercy. The man sat down on the curb and held it. It might have been a laughable situation – only no thinking person could have laughed.

The man nursed the doll as tenderly as Dot would have done herself. He rocked to and fro on the curb, hugging the battered doll and looking down at it earnestly.

Nobody had yet noticed the incident – save Sammy Pinkney; and Sammy Pinkney had run away.

Dot was bold in the cause of any one in need, if she was not bold for herself. She asked for the glass of cold water and obtained it. She brought it carefully back to the man on the curbstone, holding the glass in both her dimpled hands.

His face was still very red, but his eyes were no longer glassy. He looked at the child with a shamed expression slowly dawning in his countenance, and his eyes were moist with tears.

“You’d better take your doll, little girl, and get away from me,” he said, but not roughly.

“Oh, no,” said Dot, determinedly. “I must help you. I know you must be very sick. You ought to see our Dr. Forsyth. He could make you well quick, I know.”

“I guess you can cure me as quickly as a doctor,” said the man, hanging his head. “I – I had a little girl like you once.”

“Now drink some of this,” urged Dot, without noticing the man’s last remark, and offering the glass of water.

He took it in a trembling hand and raised it to his lips. The little girl reached for the Alice-doll, but watched him carefully.

“Don’t spill it,” she said, “and don’t drink it all. I think if I put some on your face you’d feel better.”

Immediately she produced a diminutive handkerchief, folded just as it had been ironed, and when she took back the glass, she dipped the bit of muslin in the water remaining in it.

Then with tender hand she wiped his hot face; and she wiped away two big tears, too, that started down his cheeks. She was still engaged in thus playing the Good Samaritan when a swiftly moving motor car coming through Willow Street was suddenly brought to a stop beside them.

There was a thin, wiry fellow at the steering wheel. The goggles he wore half disguised him. In the tonneau sat a fat, prosperous looking man smoking a big, black cigar.

“That’s him, ain’t it, Joe?” asked the fat man, nodding toward the man sitting on the curbstone.

“Yep. That’s him,” rejoined the chauffeur.

“Hey, Mr. Maynard!” exclaimed the fat man. “Get up and get in here. I want to talk to you.”

The fast sobering man looked up, saw the speaker, and did not look particularly pleased. He tried to rise. Although his brain was fast clearing, his limbs were still wabbly.

“Get out and boost him in here,” said the fat man, in a low tone to the chauffeur.

The latter hopped out. He came quickly to the aid of Mr. Maynard, and pushed little Dot Kenway rudely aside. The man still held the doll.

“Say! you don’t want that thing!” muttered the chauffeur, and he seized the doll and flung it disdainfully upon the ground.

Dot uttered a scream of terror. At that moment Agnes and Neale O’Neil, the latter carrying the girl’s schoolbooks, came around the corner.

CHAPTER VI – THE BIG TOUR IS PLANNED

Mr. Maynard, as the fat man had called Dot’s new acquaintance, grumbled something or other at the chauffeur because of his treatment of the Alice-doll; but he was not yet quite himself and the fellow merely laughed and urged Maynard toward the car. The fat man laughed, too.

“Come on, Mr. Maynard. We’ll take you home,” said the big man, holding open the door of the tonneau.

Just as Neale O’Neil and Agnes reached the spot, the chauffeur pushed Maynard in and stepped quickly into his own place.

“Say! what did you do to this little girl?” demanded Neale, with some heat, addressing the chauffeur.

The fellow did not answer; neither did the big man; and Maynard had tumbled into a seat without a word. Dot had already picked up her doll; it was not hurt. The car started and rolled away.

“The mean thing!” exclaimed Neale. “Don’t cry, Dot.”

“I – I’m not going to,” sobbed the smallest Corner House girl. “I don’t b’lieve they’ll be kind to that man. He’s awful sick.”

“Who is?” asked Neale quickly, exchanging glances with Agnes.

“That man they took away. I got him a drink of water. But Sammy Pinkney told a story ’bout him.”

“What did Sammy say?” asked Agnes, but her attention scarcely on what Dot was saying.

The little girl told her. “But he was sick. I know it. I got him a drink of water. He wasn’t carrying a brick at all.”

Neale had grinned faintly; but his face was quickly sober again.

“I know who that Mr. Maynard is,” he said. “He used to work in the court house. I believe he was in Mr. Collinger’s office – and he was a real nice man once.”

“Why, he is now,” cried Dot, listening with very sharp ears. “Only he is sick.”

“Perhaps you are right, Dottie,” agreed Neale, still gravely, but speaking to Agnes. “Anyhow, he lost his wife and then his little girl. He’s gone all to pieces, they say. It’s an awfully sad case. And do you know who that big man is?”

“No,” said Agnes, still unnoticing and gazing after the disappearing car.

“That’s Jim Brady. He’s a ward leader on the other side of town. He’s very powerful in politics – ”

“Oh, Neale!” cried Agnes, suddenly, seizing her friend’s arm.

“Hul-lo! What’s the matter?” asked Neale.

“Do you know who that fellow was that drove the car? Did you see him?”

“No-o. I didn’t notice him much. He had dust goggles on – ”

“I know! I know!” cried the excited girl. “They concealed his face a good deal. But I saw the freckles.”

“The freckles?” repeated Neale, wonderingly.

“Yes. Of course. It was that freckled fellow who spoke to Ruth that day.”

“Not Joe Dawson?” cried the boy.

“Yes. If that’s his real name. Oh, Neale! Let’s have him arrested.”

“Cricky!” ejaculated the surprised youth. “Arrest your aunt!”

Agnes burst out laughing at that – serious as she was. “Aunt Sarah Maltby certainly did not steal Mr. Collinger’s motor car,” she said.

“Well. We don’t know that Saleratus Joe did,” grinned Neale. “Come on home. Don’t cry any more, Dot. Just the same I would like to punch that fellow who threw down your doll.”

“Can’t we find out who he is – all about him?” demanded Agnes.

“Maybe. That Mr. Maynard knows him, I s’pose. I could ask him. I used to clean Mr. Maynard’s yard and sidewalks for him. I’ll see,” promised Neale O’Neil.

When the trio reached the Corner House that day, however, they found a subject afoot that put out of Neale’s and Agnes’ minds for the time being all thought of the stealing of Mr. Collinger’s car. And yet the county surveyor’s aunt had something to do with this very interesting topic under discussion.

Mrs. Heard was present, having a neighborly cup of tea with Mrs. MacCall, who was quite as much a friend of the family as she was housekeeper. Mr. Howbridge had chanced to drop in as well, and Ruth had arrived home ahead of the other Corner House girls.

“Oh, Aggie!” cried Ruth, running out of the sitting room where tea was being served, Uncle Rufus having rolled the service table in there at Mrs. MacCall’s request. “Just guess!”

“Going to have rice waffles for supper,” put in Neale, with a cheerful grin.

“That boy!” said the oldest girl, scornfully.

“What has happened?” demanded Agnes, excitedly. Ruth was seldom given to exuberance of speech or action, and she was plainly stirred up now.

“He says we can do it!”

“Huh?” grunted Neale, staring.

“Who says we can do what?” demanded Agnes, her blue eyes almost as wide as saucers. “How you talk, Ruth Kenway!”

“It will be most delightful, I am sure,” said the older girl, more composedly. “We shall all enjoy it. And Mrs. Heard has agreed to act as chaperone, for Mrs. MacCall can’t go, and you know how Aunt Sarah Maltby feels about the auto.”

“Oh! I see,” grumbled Neale. “A glimmer of intelligence reaches my brain. You are talking about the trip in the auto after school closes.”

“Is that it?” cried Agnes, clasping her hands. “Oh, Ruthie!”

“That is it, my dear! Mr. Howbridge just spoke about it himself. He has known Mrs. Heard for years, you see, and he thinks she would be just the nicest person in the world to go with us.”

“And so she is,” agreed Agnes.

“Well,” said Dot, who had listened in grave silence, “if we are going off on a long journey with our car, my Alice-doll must have her complexion ‘tended to. You take her, Neale, and get her doctored,” and she thrust the precious doll directly into the boy’s hands, and marched out of the room with quivering lip. It was really very hard for the smallest Corner House girl to part from her most loved child even in such an emergency.

“There now! What did I tell you?” demanded Agnes, of Neale. “You’ve got your hands full.”

“Of doll,” he admitted, but he did not appear rueful. “I know just where they will fix her up as good as new,” and he laughed. “I believe in preparedness. I foresaw this when I spoke about the doll the other day.”

But now was the time to talk about the tour. Agnes had prepared for this since the very first day she knew they were to have the automobile. The height of her ambition was to travel in the most modern way – by motor car.

With Neale – and sometimes aided by her sisters – she had planned elaborate routes through the surrounding country – sometimes into neighboring states. She had borrowed maps and guide books galore and had purchased not a few. In fact, in a desultory way, she and Neale had picked up a smattering of knowledge of roads and towns and hotels and general geographical information which really might be of use if, as Ruth said they would, the Corner House girls should go on a tour in the new seven-passenger car.

They talked about it to the exclusion of almost everything else that evening, and Agnes spread the news abroad at school the next day. That the Corner House girls really owned a car was already an important fact to their school friends.

For Ruth and Agnes were not likely to be selfish in their enjoyment of their new possession. Stinginess was not a fault in the Kenway family.

On the very second Saturday after they had come into possession of the car Neale had taken out the older girls and a party of their friends in the morning, and in the afternoon Tess and Dot had played hostesses to a lot of little girls. As Mr. Howbridge remarked with a laugh, the cost of the new car was a mere drop in the bucket. Maintenance and gasoline were the items that would deplete the pocketbooks of his wards.

As for Neale O’Neil, he almost lived in the car.

Of course, the entire family had to try it – even to Linda. Linda enjoyed it, and in her broken English stated it as her opinion that “heafen could be not like dis.” Which was a statement not to be contradicted.

Mrs. MacCall was doubtful about the utility of the machine after all. Uncle Rufus, when he went out with Neale and the little girls and not a few of the pets, including a couple of kittens and Tom Jonah, just clung to the seat-rail with both hands and actually turned gray about the corners of his mouth.

As for Aunt Sarah Maltby, she had set her face against the innovation from the first.

“But of course,” she said, in her severe way, “it doesn’t matter what I say or what my opinion may be. Nobody asks me to advise. I am a non-entity in this house.”

That was the beginning. Ruth and Agnes and even Mrs. MacCall had to coax and plead and cajole before the old lady would promise to take a ride in the car. When she did, she dressed in her Sunday dress – the one she always went to church in – and carried her prayer-book.

This was a state of “preparedness” that amused Agnes and Neale very much. Aunt Sarah evidently expected the worst. She even carried in her pocket the peppermint lozenges which she always took to church with her and nibbled at in sermon time.

Indeed, Aunt Sarah, who was a pessimist at the best of times, approached the ordeal in such a way that Ruth really began to pity her.

“I don’t care! she’d spoil all our fun,” protested Agnes, exasperated.

But the older sister said: “Perhaps she can’t help it after all, Aggie. And if she really is scared, I am sorry.”

At that Agnes whispered sharply: “Look at her face!”

Neale was running the car carefully, but at a good speed, on one of the pleasantest and smoothest highways around Milton. The air was invigorating, the outlook was beautiful, and the car ran like a charm.

In a moment of forgetfulness, perhaps, Aunt Sarah’s grim countenance had changed. It did actually seem as though there was a smile hovering about her lips. To the two girls who rode with her in the tonneau it seemed as though it must be impossible for anybody not to enjoy the ride.

“Isn’t it splendid, Aunt Sarah?” queried Ruth, with shining eyes, leaning toward the old woman.

Instantly Aunt Sarah’s face became – as usual – forbidding. She shook her head with determination.

“No, Niece Ruth, it is nothing of the kind,” she declared. “I do not like it at all. I knew I shouldn’t. I wish to return.”

“Well!” Agnes had gasped in her sister’s ear. “Don’t try to tell me! If Aunt Sarah was not almost laughing then, why, then her face slipped!”