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“Oh, we mustn’t let Tom Jonah bite that man,” Tess declared, and kept right on running toward the henhouse.
“If that dog bites – ” screamed Ruth, and ran after her smaller sister.
There was the big dog leaping savagely toward the low eaves of the hennery. A kicking figure was sprawled on the roof, clinging with both hands to the ridge of it. The girls obtained a glimpse of a dark face, with flashing teeth, and big gold rings in the marauder’s ears.
“Tak’ dog away! Tak’ dog away!” the man said, in a strangled voice.
“He’s one of those Gypsies,” whispered Agnes, in an awed voice.
A tribe of the nomads in question had passed through Milton but a day or two before, and the girls had been frightened by the appearance of the men of the tribe who had called at the old Corner House.
Now, whether this marauder belonged to the same people or not, Ruth saw that he looked like a Gypsy. For another reason, too, her mind was relieved at once; Tom Jonah was only savage toward the man on the roof.
When Tess ran right up to the leaping dog, he stopped barking, and wagged his tail, as though satisfied that he had done his duty in drawing the family to the scene. But he still kept his eyes on the man, and occasionally uttered a growl deep in his throat.
“What are you doing up there?” Ruth demanded of the man.
“Tak’ away dog!” he whined.
“No. I think I will let the dog hold you till a policeman comes. You were trying to rob our henroost.”
“Oh, no, Missee! You wrong. No do that,” stammered the man.
“What were you doing here, then?”
Before the fellow could manufacture any plausible tale, a shout came from beyond the back fence, and somebody was heard to scramble into the Corner House yard.
“What’s the matter, girls?” demanded Neale O’Neil’s cheerful voice.
“Oh, come here, Neale!” cried Agnes. “Tom Jonah’s caught a Gypsy.”
“Tom Who?” demanded the tall, pleasant-faced boy of fifteen, who immediately approached the henhouse.
“Tom Jonah,” announced Tess. “He’s just the nicest dog!”
The boy saw the group more clearly then. He looked from the savagely growling animal to the man sprawling on the roof, and burst out laughing.
“Yes! I guess that fellow up there feels that the dog is very ‘nice.’ Where did you get the dog, and where did he get his name?”
“We’ll tell you all about that later, Neale,” said Ruth, more gravely. “At least, we’ll tell you all we know about the dear old dog. Isn’t he a splendid fellow to catch this man at my hens?”
“And the fellow had some in this bag!” exclaimed Neale, finding a bag of flopping poultry at the corner of the hen-run.
“Tak’ away dog!” begged the man on the roof again.
“That’s all he’s afraid of,” said Agnes. “I bet he has a knife. Isn’t he a wicked looking fellow?”
“Regular brigand,” agreed Neale. “What we going to do with him?”
“Give him to a policeman,” suggested Agnes.
“Do you suppose the policeman would want him?” chuckled Neale. “To awaken a Milton officer at this hour of the night would be almost sacrilege, wouldn’t it?”
“What shall we do?” demanded Agnes.
Ruth had been thinking more sensibly for a few moments. Now she spoke up decisively:
“The man did not manage to do any harm. Put the poultry back in the house, Neale. If he ever comes again he will know what to expect. He thought we had no dog; but he sees we have – and a savage one. Let him go.”
“Had we better do that, sister?” whispered Agnes. “Oughtn’t he to be punished?”
“I expect so,” Ruth said, grimly. “But for once I am going to shirk my duty. We’ll take away the dog and let him go.”
“Who’ll take him away?” demanded Agnes, suddenly.
Neale had taken the sack in which the fowl struggled, to the door of the henhouse, opened it, and dumped the fowl out. Tom Jonah evidently recognized him for a friend, for he wagged his tail, but still kept his eye on the man upon the roof.
“I declare!” said Ruth. “I hadn’t thought. Whom will he mind?”
“Come here, Tom Jonah!” said Neale, snapping his fingers.
Tom Jonah still wagged his tail, but he remained ready to receive the Gypsy (if such the fellow was) in his jaws, if he descended.
“Come away, Tom!” exclaimed Agnes, confidently. “Come on back to the house.”
The man on the roof moved and Tom Jonah stiffened. He refused to budge.
“Guess you’ll have to call a cop after all,” said Neale, doubtfully.
“Here, sir!” commanded Ruth. “Come away. You have done enough – ”
But the dog did not think so. He held his place and growled.
“I guess you’re bound to stay up there, till daylight – or a policeman – doth appear, my friend,” called up Neale to the besieged.
“Tak’ away dog!” begged the frightened fellow.
“Why, Tom Jonah!” exclaimed Tess, walking up to the big dog and putting a hand on his collar. “You must come away when you are spoken to. You’ve caught the bad man, and that’s enough.”
Tom Jonah turned and licked her hand. Then he moved a few steps away with her and looked back.
“Come on with me, Tom Jonah,” commanded the little girl, firmly. “Let the bad man go.”
“What do you know about that?” demanded Neale.
The next minute the fellow had scrambled up the roof, caught the low hanging limb of a shade tree that stood near the fence, and swinging himself like a cat into the tree, he got out on another branch that overhung the sidewalk, dropped, and ran.
Tom Jonah sprang to the fence with a savage bay; but the man only went the faster. The incident was closed in a minute, and the little party of half-dressed young folk went back to their beds, while the strange dog curled up on his mat in the corner of the porch again and slept the sleep of the just till morning.
And now that the excitement is over, let us find out a little something about the Corner House girls, their friends, their condition in life, and certain interesting facts regarding them.
When Mr. Howbridge, the lawyer from Milton and Uncle Peter Stower’s man of affairs and the administrator of his estate, came to the little tenement on Essex Street, Bloomingsburg, where the four orphaned Kenway girls had lived for some years with Aunt Sarah Maltby, he first met Tess and Dot returning from the drugstore with Aunt Sarah’s weekly supply of peppermint drops.
Aunt Sarah had been a burden on the Kenways for many years. The girls had only their father’s pension to get along on. Aunt Sarah claimed that when Uncle Peter died, his great estate would naturally fall to her, and then she would return all the benefits she had received from the Kenway family.
But the lawyer knew that queer old Uncle Peter Stower had made a will leaving practically all his property to the four girls in trust, and to Aunt Sarah only a small legacy. But this will had been hidden somewhere by the old man before his recent death and had not yet been found.
There seemed to be no other claimants to the Stower Estate, however, and the court allowed Mr. Howbridge to take the Kenway girls and Aunt Sarah to Milton and establish them in the Stower Homestead, known far and wide as the old Corner House.
Here, during the year that had passed, many interesting and exciting things had happened to Ruth and Agnes and Tess and Dot.
Ruth was the head of the family, and the lawyer greatly admired her good sense and ability. She was not a strikingly pretty girl, for she had “stringy” black hair and little color; but her eyes were big and brown, and those eyes, and her mouth, laughed suddenly at you and gave expression to her whole face. She was now completing her seventeenth year.
Agnes was thirteen, a jolly, roly-poly girl, who was fond of jokes, a bit of a tomboy, up to all sorts of pranks – who laughed easily and cried stormily – had “lots of molasses colored hair” as she said herself, and was the possessor of a pair of blue eyes that could stare a rude boy out of countenance, but who would spoil the effect of this the next instant by giggling; a girl who had a soulmate among her girl friends all of the time, but not frequently did one last for long in the catalog of her “best friends.”
Nobody remembered that Tess had been named Theresa. She was a wise little ten-year-old who possessed some of Ruth’s dignity and some of Agnes’ prettiness, and the most tender heart in the world, which made her naturally tactful. She was quick at her books and very courageous.
Dorothy, or Dot, was the baby and pet of the family. She was a little brunette fairy; and if she was not very wise as yet, she was faithful and lovable, and not one of “the Corner House girls,” as the Kenways were soon called by Milton people, was more beloved than Dot.
The girls’ best boy friend lived with the old cobbler, Mr. Con Murphy, on the rear street, and in a little house the yard of which adjoined the larger grounds of the old Corner House. We have seen how quickly Neale O’Neil came to the assistance of the Kenway girls when they were in trouble.
Neale had been brought up among circus people, his mother having traveled all her life with Twomley & Sorber’s Herculean Circus and Menagerie. The boy’s desire for an education and to win a better place in the world for himself, had caused him to run away from his uncle, Mr. Sorber, and support himself in Milton while he attended school.
The Corner House girls had befriended Neale and when his uncle finally searched him out and found the boy, it was they who influenced the man against taking Neale away. Neale had proved himself an excellent scholar and had made friends in Milton; now he was about to graduate with Agnes from the highest grammar grade to high school.
The particulars of all these happenings have been related in the first two volumes of the series, entitled respectively, “The Corner House Girls” and “The Corner House Girls at School.”
When Agnes woke up in the morning following the unsuccessful raid of the Gypsy man on the hennery, she had something of wonderful importance to tell Ruth. She had seen her “particular friend,” Trix Severn, on the street Saturday afternoon and Trix had told her something.
“You’ve heard the girls talking about Pleasant Cove, Ruthie?” said Agnes, earnestly. “You know Mr. Terrence Severn owns one of the big hotels there?”
“Of course. Trix talks enough about it,” said the older Kenway girl.
“Oh! you don’t like Trix – ”
“I’m not exceedingly fond of her. And there was a time when you thought her your very deadliest enemy,” laughed Ruth.
“Well! Trix has changed,” declared the unsuspicious Agnes, “and she’s proposed the very nicest thing, Ruth. She says her mother and father will let her bring all four of us to the Cove for the first fortnight after graduation. The hotel will not be full then, and we will be Trix’s guests. And we’ll have loads of fun.”
“I – don’t – know – ” began Ruth, but Agnes broke in warmly:
“Now, don’t you say ‘No,’ Ruthie Kenway! Don’t you say ‘No!’ I’ve just made up my mind to go to Pleasant Cove – ”
“No need of flying off, Ag,” said Ruth, in the cool tone that usually brought Agnes “down to earth again.” “We have talked of going there for a part of the summer. A change to salt air will be beneficial for us all – so Dr. Forsythe says. I have talked to Mr. Howbridge, and he says ‘Yes.’”
“Well, then!”
“But I doubt the advisability of accepting Trix Severn’s invitation.”
“Now, isn’t that mean – ”
“Hold your horses,” again advised Ruth. “We will go, anyway. If all is well we will stay at the hotel a while. Pearl Harrod’s uncle owns a bungalow there, too; she has asked me to come there for a while, and bring you all.”
“Well! isn’t that nice?” agreed Agnes. “Then we can stay twice as long.”
“Whether it will be right for us to accept the hospitality offered us when we have no means of returning it – ”
“Oh, dear me, Ruth! don’t be a fuss-cat.”
“There is a big tent colony there – quite removed from the hotel,” suggested Ruth. “Many of our friends and their folks are going there. Neale O’Neil is going with a party of the boys for at least two weeks.”
“Say! we’ll have scrumptious times,” cried Agnes, with sparkling eyes. Her anticipation of every joy in life added immensely to the joy itself.
“Yes – if we go,” said Ruth, slowly. But it was something for the others to look forward to with much pleasure.
CHAPTER III – THE DANCE AT CARRIE POOLE’S
Tess and Dot Kenway had something of particular interest to hold their attention, too, the minute they awoke on this Sunday morning. Dot voiced the matter first when she asked:
“Do you suppose that dear Tom Jonah is here yet, Tess?”
“Oh, I hope so!” cried the older girl.
“Let’s run see,” suggested Dot, and nothing loth Tess slipped into her bathrobe and slippers, too, and the two girls pattered downstairs. Their baths, always overseen by Ruth, were neglected. They must see, they thought, if the good old dog was on the porch.
Nobody was astir downstairs; Mrs. MacCall had not yet left her room, and on Sunday mornings even Uncle Rufus allowed himself an extra hour in bed. There was the delicious smell of warm baked beans left over night in the range oven; the big, steaming pot would be set upon the table at breakfast, flanked with golden-brown muffins on one side and the sliced “loaf,” or brownbread, on the other.
Sandyface came yawning from her basket behind the stove when Tess and Dot entered the kitchen. She had four little black and white blind babies in that basket which she had found in a barrel in the woodshed only a few days before.
Mrs. MacCall said she did not know what was to be done with the four kittens. Sandyface’s original family was quite grown up, and if these four were allowed to live, too, that would make nine cats around the old Corner House.
“And the goodness knows!” exclaimed the housekeeper, “that’s a whole lot more than any family has a business to keep. We’re overrun with cats.”
Tess unlocked the door and she and Dot went out on the porch, Sandyface following. There was no sign of the big dog.
“Tom Jonah’s gone!” sighed Dot, quaveringly.
“I wouldn’t have thought it – when we treated him so nicely,” said Tess.
Sandyface sniffed suspiciously at the old mat on which the dog had lain. Then she looked all about before venturing off the porch.
The sunshine and quiet of a perfect Sunday morning lay all about the old Corner House. Robins sought their very souls for music to tell how happy they were, in the tops of the cherry trees. Catbirds had not yet lost their love songs of the spring; though occasionally one scolded harshly when a roaming cat came too near the hidden nest.
Wrens hopped about the path, and even upon the porch steps, secure in their knowledge that they were too quick for Sandyface to reach, and with unbounded faith in human beings. An oriole burst into melody, swinging in the great snowball bush near the Willow Street fence.
There was a moist, warm smell from the garden; the old rooster crowed raucously; Billy Bumps bleated a wistful “Good-morning” from his pen. Then came a scramble of padded feet, and Sandyface went up the nearest tree like a flash of lightning.
“Here is Tom Jonah!” cried Tess, with delight.
