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CHAPTER VII – WHAT SAMMY DID

School had closed, and the long and glorious vacation had been ushered in. The Corner House girls had now lived in Milton for two years, and felt very much at home.

They knew many people – Agnes said: “A whole raft of people,” but Ruth did not approve of such language and accused her fly-away sister of learning it from Neale O’Neil.

“Poor Neale! Must he be blamed for all my sins?” asked Agnes, with a wry smile. She was mending a tear in a very good skirt – and she did not like to sew.

“Oh, I will not accuse him of being the cause of that, Aggie,” said Ruth, pointing to the tear.

“You’re wrong,” retorted her sister with a sudden elfish smile. “If he had not chased me, to get those cherries I stole from him, I wouldn’t have caught my skirt on the nail and ‘tored’ it, as Dot would say.”

“Tomboy!” declared Ruth, rather scornfully.

“I don’t care,” Agnes said, biting off her thread. “I hope I’ll never be starched and stiff.”

“But you are getting older,” went on Ruth.

“Not too decrepit to run yet,” retorted Agnes, pertly.

Ruth laughed at that, and pinched her sister’s rosy cheek. “Nevertheless,” she said, “that is one of the skirts you will be obliged to wear on our tour.”

“Oh! Our tour!” cried Agnes, ecstatically, clasping her hands. “Ouch!”

“What is the matter?” demanded Ruth, startled by her sister’s squeal.

“Stuck my finger with this horrid needle,” mumbled Agnes, sucking the pricked digit.

She went back to her sewing as Ruth went out of the room. In came Neale in cap, goggles, and leggings.

“Oh, Neale! Have you got the car out?”

“Why, Aggie!” cried the boy, without replying to her question, and eyeing the work in her lap askance. “I am surprised! You’re just like Satan – as we had it in our lesson last Sunday – aren’t you?”

“Well! I like your impudence. In what way, please?” demanded Agnes.

“Why, you’re sewing tears, aren’t you?” chuckled Neale. “And the Bible says the Evil One ‘sowed tares.’”

“Oh, don’t! It’s too great a shock. But, are you going out with the car?”

“Been out,” said the boy. “I took Mr. Howbridge over to Brenton Woods to catch the train for the West on the Q. V. We won’t see him again until we’re back from our tour.”

“Oh, yes! Our tour!” repeated Agnes; but this time she did not clasp her hands in ecstasy. She looked at her pricked finger ruefully instead.

“And coming back,” went on Neale, “I happened to run across Mr. Maynard.”

“Oh, yes!” cried Agnes again, but in an entirely different tone.

“He’d been fishing. You see, he doesn’t have much to do now that he’s out of the surveyor’s office. That’s why he – he gets into trouble so much, I suppose. That and worrying about the death of his wife and baby. I brought him home in the car.”

“Did you ask him about that Joe fellow?”

“Saleratus Joe?”

“Yes. If that’s what you are bound to call him,” Agnes said.

“I did. Mr. Maynard doesn’t know the fellow personally. He didn’t seem to remember much about that day he met Dot. He remembers her, though,” Neale said, thoughtfully. “Asked about her in a shamefaced sort of way.”

“I should think he would be ashamed.”

“He is to be pitied,” said the boy, soberly.

“Oh, yes. I suppose so. All such men are. But for little Dot to get mixed up with a drunken man – ”

“It didn’t hurt her,” said Neale, stoutly. “And maybe it has helped him.”

Agnes took a minute to digest this; and she made no further comment. But she asked:

“How about that Joe? Doesn’t Mr. Maynard know anything about him?”

“He says not. Suppose we tell Mrs. Heard, and she’ll tell Mr. Collinger. Joe Dawson has sometimes worked for Jim Brady, the big politician. Mr. Collinger must know if Brady is one of the men who have been trying to get those maps and the papers away from him.”

“Well,” said Agnes, “I hope we can help bring those auto thieves to book.”

“Guess Mr. Collinger is more worried about his maps – if they got them.”

“Oh, Neale! suppose they should steal our car? Wouldn’t it be dreadful? We must catch them.”

Neale laughed. “You’re going to be a regular detective when you grow up, Aggie. I can see that,” he said.

“Put up the hammer, little boy,” advised Agnes. “Do you know that it has been decided when we are to start on our tour?”

“No. When?”

“Mrs. Heard telephoned that she will be ready to-morrow. We shall start some time the following day, so Ruthie just said.”

“Good!” declared the boy. “Say, Aggie! we’re bound to have a dandy time.”

“Even if we weren’t, I should be glad to get away from this place,” said the girl, suddenly a little cross.

“Why?” asked Neale O’Neil, in surprise.

“Because of that pest, Sammy Pinkney.”

“What about him?”

“He is fairly hounding us to death,” said Agnes, with a sigh.

“What about?”

“He has begged to go with us every hour – almost – since he first heard we were going on a long trip in our auto.” Then she suddenly giggled. “Oh, Neale! He has decided that it would be more fun to be an auto pirate than a salt water buccaneer of the old school.”

“One great kid that,” chuckled Neale, appreciatively.

“But he is an awful nuisance. He bothers the little girls whenever they go out of the house. He’s told his mother he’s going with us – and I suppose Mrs. Pinkney half believes we have invited him.”

“Cricky!” chuckled Neale again. “I imagine she’d be glad to get rid of him for a few weeks.”

“My, goodness, me!” exclaimed the startled Agnes. “She sha’n’t get rid of him at our expense – no, sir! I won’t hear of it. Neither will Ruth. And, besides, there isn’t going to be breathing space in that car after we all pile in – with Tom Jonah and the baggage, too.”

“I have an idea!” said Neale, wickedly, “that we ought to have an auto truck trailing us with all the furbelows and what-nots you girls will think it necessary to carry.”

“Mr. Smarty!” Agnes scoffed. “Remember we went camping last summer and we know something about what to take with us and what not to take.”

“That’s all right,” said Neale. “But the Corner House girls are not going to live under canvas this time – that is, not much. At the fancy hotels you’ll all want to cut a dash. How are you going to do it?”

Agnes laughed at him. “Don’t you suppose all that has been thought of?” she demanded. “Mrs. Heard will send a trunk, and so shall we, by express to the Polo House at Granthan. That is going to be our first ‘fancy’ hotel, as you call them. Then, when we leave there, the trunks will be shipped on to our next fashionable roosting place. But, oh, dear me! I don’t care much about the hotels. I want to be moving,” declared this very modern young American girl.

“Cricky!” grumbled Neale. “I bet if you have your way we’ll get pinched for speeding in every county in the state.”

Every waking hour thereafter, until, on the second day, the car was brought to the side gate of the Corner House premises, was a busy hour for the four Kenways and Neale O’Neil. Mrs. Heard came over with her personal baggage, for the route the party was to follow would not take them anywhere near her home. Besides, it was better to pack the car carefully before the start was made, and thus find out where every piece of baggage – as well as every passenger – was to be placed.

The car was roomy and comfortable; but bags and suitcases of all descriptions – to say nothing of an excited Newfoundland dog – were bound to occupy much space.

Neale declared he had groomed the car “to the nines” – and it looked it. It was new enough, in any case, for everything about it to shine and glisten. A good mechanician from the public garage had been over it the day before and pronounced every part in perfect working order.

“But that doesn’t mean that we can’t get a blow-out before going a mile,” growled Neale, who had worked so hard that he was rather pessimistic. “But, come on, girls, bring out the rest of the household furniture. You seem to have half the contents of the Corner House packed in already.”

Ruth calmly ignored this, and went about final arrangements in her usual capable manner. Nothing would be forgotten, nothing overlooked when Ruth Kenway was in charge.

The little girls were just as busy in their way as their sisters. Tess and Dot were too much excited and far too much taken up with their own affairs, to pay any attention to Sammy Pinkney.

But that hopeful youngster stuck to Ruth and Agnes like a burr – and a very annoying one.

“Aw, say! let a feller go!” was his mildest way of pleading for space in the automobile for his own small self. “I won’t get in your way.”

“No,” said Ruth, with the same decision she had expressed from the first. “No.”

“Aw, Aggie! you know me! If you say I can, I can.”

“You’re the biggest bother in the world, Sammy Pinkney!” declared the second oldest Corner House girl.

“Won’t bother you a mite. I’ll help. I’ll run errands – ”

“What errands, I’d like to know?” scoffed Agnes.

“Well – you’ll want somebody to run ’em when the car breaks down – ”

That settled it! Agnes would not listen to him any further.

“Say! I’ll give Dot my bicycle if you’ll let me go,” he urged on Ruth.

“I’d be afraid to have her ride it,” laughed Ruth. “The only thing you ever did give the little girls, Sammy – that goat – has been a dreadful annoyance.”

“Give us your bulldog, Sammy?” suggested Agnes, knowing that the very soul of the boy was knit to that ugly, bandy-legged beast.

“Ow!” groaned Sammy. He could not agree to that. “I tell you I’ll do anything you want me to – ”

“Stay at home, then, and don’t bother us,” said Ruth, somewhat tartly for her.

“Aw, do say I can go, Aggie,” he pleaded for the last time with the other sister.

“I’d like to see you find room aboard that car!” cried Agnes, having finally packed the last bag and parcel in the tonneau.

At these words Sammy shot away like a rabbit and disappeared. Mrs. Heard and the little girls came out. Everybody else from the Corner House appeared to bid the party good-bye – even Aunt Sarah.

“It’ll rain before you get far,” prophesied this last person, grimly, “and you’ll have to come back.”

She would not admit that an automobile was fit to travel in during wet weather.

“What have you got in that basket?” demanded Agnes of Tess, suddenly pouncing upon the serious little girl.

“Oh, Aggie! Only two of Sandyface’s grandchildren. You know, we haven’t found names for them yet.”

“Two kittens!” gasped Agnes. “What do you know about that, Ruth?”

“How about Billy Bumps, too?” said Neale, looking perfectly sober.

“Oh, he and Tom Jonah would fight,” said Dot, proudly bearing her renovated Alice-doll in a brand new coat and hat. The Alice-doll really was a pleasure to look upon once more. Only, whereas her hair had originally been dark, now it was very blonde indeed, to match her pink cheeks and blue eyes.

“Of course, it isn’t very respectaful,” admitted the smallest Corner House girl, in speaking of the change in Alice’s appearance. “But ladies do bleach their hair and make it blond; and Alice always did love to be fashionable.”

Meanwhile Tess had been convinced by Ruth that an automobile tour was no place for two kittens. Tom Jonah was being taken along as a means of safety for the car. Agnes was quite sure herself that automobile thieves were only waiting their chance to steal this brand new motor car.

They all got into the car at last – Mrs. Heard, Ruth and the two smaller girls in the tonneau, heaped about with baggage, but comfortable. Tom Jonah crouched under Agnes’ feet in front, where she sat beside Neale, his head sticking out of the car and his tongue displayed like a pink woolen necktie.

Everybody shouted “good-bye!” There were plenty of neighbors to call after the touring party. And those on the street, for the first few blocks, seemed to be greatly amazed and amused by the passage of the Corner House automobile.

“Goodness!” ejaculated Agnes, in some disgust, and trying to sit up primly, “what do you suppose is the matter with folks, anyway? One would think we were a circus parade.”

“Humph! guess we do look funny,” chuckled Neale. “I once saw a picture supposed to represent the good ship Mayflower as she must have appeared off Plymouth Rock, if all the antique furniture you hear about really was brought over by the Pilgrims, as people claim. They had to hang chairs and tables and highboys and lowboys and such things from her spars, besides having an awful deckload. And I reckon we look like a large family on moving day,” finished the boy, with an expansive grin.

“We do not!” exclaimed Agnes, quite put out. “Look at that old gentleman stare. What’s he saying – and shaking his cane, too?”

“Got me,” returned her comrade on the front seat.

He increased the car’s speed and they passed people too quickly for the latter to make themselves heard – if what some of them shouted was of importance. The passing of the Corner House motor car seemed to interest and please the urchins along the way more than anybody else.

“Goodness!” murmured Mrs. Heard, “I never was so much stared at before, I do believe. What do you suppose is the matter with us?”

“They must all want to ride with us,” said Tess, quite composedly.

“Well, they just can’t!” cried Dot. “See that boy running and yelling, will you? Why, he can’t catch up.”

Once out of the city Neale (of course urgently pressed by Agnes) “let her out another notch,” as he expressed it. The car ran as smoothly as though the road was macadamized – although few highways about Milton were so well made as that. But Neale was a careful and skillful driver already, and the springs of the car were excellent.

On and on the handsome car rushed, leaving little spirals of dust behind it, and sending the small fry of rural animal life scurrying out of its path. The peculiar interest shown by pedestrians as they passed through the town, was continued out in the country.

As Neale slowed down for a railroad crossing, taking it easily and carefully, although there was no train near and the gates were up, a boy yelled:

“Hi, there! Whip behind! Whip behind, mister!”

“Now! how foolish that is,” gasped Agnes, as they jolted a little going over the rails. “What do you suppose that little imp meant?”

Neale only grunted. He was thinking, and although he increased the speed of the car a little, it was only for a short distance. Then he shut her down suddenly – and stopped.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Agnes, curiously.

“Where are you going, Neale?” asked Ruth, as the boy crept out from behind the wheel, stepped over Agnes’ feet and the dog, and leaped out into the road.

“I want to see something,” muttered Neale. He went to the rear of the car. Then he uttered a shout:

“Come and look at this, will you? What do you suppose that kid has done?”

“What kid?” asked Agnes, following him nimbly out of the car. Tom Jonah bounded out, too, glad, probably, to stretch his cramped limbs.

“Sammy Pinkney!” said Neale, pushing back his dust mask and staring.

Ruth stood up to see over the folded-back top of the car. “What is it?” she demanded, unable to see anything.

But Agnes arrived beside Neale, and saw perfectly. “Well! I never!” she ejaculated. “Sammy Pinkney! how dared you? What are you doing here?”

For Sammy was roosting, more or less comfortably, on the back of the car, and had a bright, new russet leather suitcase tied on beside him with a bit of rope. He presented a grinning, dusty, befreckled face to Neale and the Corner House girl.

CHAPTER VIII – REFORMING A “PIRATE”

“Well! you said I could come, Aggie Kenway – so there!”

This was Sammy’s initial statement when Neale dragged him off his perch and brought him around to the side of the car where all could see him.

“Why! you awful boy! I never!” declared Agnes, shaking her head at him angrily.

“Yes, you did,” repeated Sammy.

“Don’t add to your wickedness by telling such a story, Sammy Pinkney,” admonished Ruth.

“Oh, Sammy!” gasped Tess, dolefully.

“I don’t believe even pirates tell stories,” added Dot, with grave conviction.

“I ain’t! I ain’t telling a story,” repeated the small boy, with earnestness. “She did! she did!”

“I never! I never!” responded Agnes.

“Wait!” put in Ruth, firmly. “We are getting nowhere. Of course you did not tell him he could come, Aggie; but he must have thought you said something like that. What did she say, Sammy Pinkney?”

“She said – she said,” choked the now much-abused-sounding Sammy. “She said she’d like to see me find room aboard the car —and I did!” and he concluded with something like triumph.

“Oh!” gasped Agnes.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Mrs. Heard, and it must be confessed she was immensely amused. “What a boy!”

“Did you ever hear the like of that?” repeated Ruth, using one of Mrs. MacCall’s favorite expressions of amazement.

“I’m sure I didn’t mean – ” began Agnes, but her older sister said, quickly:

“Of course you didn’t, deary! And that boy should have known better.”

“She did tell me so – she did!” wailed Sammy. “And I’m going. My mother said I could – and that you girls was awful nice to take me.”

“Cricky!” murmured Neale, all of a broad grin now. “You got a reputation that time, Aggie, for goodness, without meaning it.”

“I don’t care – ”

“The thing is now,” interrupted Ruth, decidedly, “how to send him home.”

At that Sammy lifted up his voice in a wail that might have touched a heart of stone. And really, after all, there was not a heart of stone in the whole party of tourists from the old Corner House – not even in Tom Jonah’s breast. The old dog went up to Sammy and tried to lap his tears away.

“Oh, see here, kid! don’t yell like that,” begged Neale. “Turn off the sprinkler. That won’t get you anywhere.”

“Will you tell me what we are to do with him, then?” demanded Ruth, quite put out. “There is no room for him in the car.”

“I can stay where I was. I don’t mind,” gulped Sammy.

“Never!” declared Agnes. “You made a show out of us all the way through town. We’ll never hear the last of it.”

“We were boarded by a pirate, sure enough,” chuckled Neale.

“He’s worse than any pirate,” sighed Ruth. “We’d know what to do with a real pirate.”

“I wonder?” murmured Neale, his eyes twinkling.

But Ruth ignored him. She thought she saw her duty, and was determined to do it. “I suppose we shall have to go back,” she hesitated.

“Oh, no, Ruthie!” begged the two little girls in chorus.

“I wouldn’t go back for that horrid little scamp!” snapped Agnes, her face flushing. “Sammy Pinkney, you are the worst boy!”

Sammy sniffed and looked at her. “I found that ring you lost that time, Aggie Kenway. ’Member?” he asked.

“But you are an awful nuisance,” pronounced Ruth, with conviction.

“You never would have knowed your hens was layin’ in Mr. Benjamin’s lot last week if I hadn’t ha’ told you, Ruthie Kenway – so there,” responded the youngster.

“And you told me that – that sick man was carrying a brick in his hat – and he wasn’t,” Dot put in faintly.

Sammy grinned at that; but he was prompt to say, too: “Well, who found all your dolls out on the grass where you’d played lawn party, and brought ’em in just before the thunder shower the other day? Heh?”

“Cricky!” exclaimed Neale, under his breath, and with some admiration, “the kid’s making out a case.”

Tess, the kind-hearted, would make no accusation; but Ruth, despite the boy’s rejoinders, remained firm.

“No,” she said. “He must go home. Is there a railroad station near from which we can send him, Neale? We’ll telephone to his mother. We are a long way from town.”

At that Sammy Pinkney, who prided himself on being “tough” and who was in training for a piratical future, broke down completely.

“Ow! ow! ow!” he howled, digging his grimy fist first into one eye and then into the other. “I don’t wanter! I don’t wanter! I don’t wanter go back. I ain’t got nobody to play with. And ma’ll lick me ’cause I said you’d ‘vited me to go – an’ now Aggie s-s-says she didn’t. And I been sick, anyway, and I can’t play with the fellers, ’cause it tires me so.

“I – I – I never git to go nowheres,” pursued Sammy, using the most atrocious English, but utterly abandoned in his grief. “You Corner House girls git all the go – go – good times, and I ain’t got even a s-s-sister to play with – ”

At this point a most astonishing thing overtook Agnes Kenway. She had begun by glaring at Sammy in anger; but as he went on to bewail his hard state, her pretty face flushed, then paled; her blue eyes filled with tears which soon began to spill over. She drew nearer to the miserable little chap, standing, dirty and forlorn, in the middle of the road.

“Now, stop that, Sammy!” she suddenly blurted out. “Just stop. Don’t cry any more.”

“He can’t go. There isn’t room,” Ruth was repeating.

Agnes turned toward the eldest Corner House girl sharply and stamped her foot.

“He shall go, Ruth Kenway – so there! He can squeeze in on the seat between Neale and me. Here! take that bag up, Neale O’Neil. There’s room for it right in here,” and she pointed. “Now! stop your crying, Sammy. You shall go; but you’ll have to be good.”

“Oh, Aggie,” cried the happy youngster, “I’ll be as good as gold. You’ll see.”

“Well!” gasped Ruth, yet not sorry that for once Agnes had usurped authority.

Mrs. Heard laughed. Dot said:

“Well, it’s true. He hasn’t any sister.”

“And I’m sure he can be good,” put in Tess, the optimist.

Neale was chuckling to himself as he put Sammy’s suitcase in the place indicated.

“What is the matter with you, Neale O’Neil?” demanded Agnes, hotly, brushing the tears out of her eyes.

“I was just thinking that this party has assumed a good deal of a contract,” said the light-haired boy.

“What for?”

“For reforming a pirate,” said Neale.