Buch lesen: «The Corner House Girls in a Play»

CHAPTER I
THE SOVEREIGNS OF ENGLAND

"I never can learn them in the wide, wide world! I just know I never can, Dot!"

"Dear me! I'm dreadfully sorry for you, Tess," responded Dorothy Kenway – only nobody ever called her by her full name, for she really was too small to achieve the dignity of anything longer than "Dot."

"I'm dreadfully sorry for you, Tess," she repeated, hugging the Alice-doll a little closer and wrapping the lace "throw" carefully about the shoulders of her favorite child. The Alice-doll had never enjoyed robust health since her awful experience of more than a year before, when she had been buried alive.

Of course, Dot had not got as far in school as the sovereigns of England. She had not as yet heard very much about the history of her own country. She knew, of course, that Columbus discovered it, the Pilgrims settled it, that George Washington was the father of it, and Abraham Lincoln saved it.

Tess Kenway was usually very quick in her books, and she was now prepared to enter a class in the lower grammar grade of the Milton school in which she would have easy lessons in English history. She had just purchased the history on High Street, for school would open for the autumn term in a few days.

Mr. Englehart, one of the School Board and an influential citizen of Milton, had a penchant for beginning at the beginning of things. As he put it: "How can our children be grounded well in the history of our own country if they are not informed upon the salient points of English history – the Mother Country, from whom we obtained our first laws, and from whom came our early leaders?"

As the two youngest Kenway girls came out of the stationery and book store, Miss Pepperill was entering. Tess and Dot had met Miss Pepperill at church the Sunday previous, and Tess knew that the rather sharp-featured, bespectacled lady was to be her new teacher.

The girls whom Tess knew, who had already had experience with Miss Pepperill called her "Pepperpot." She was supposed to be very irritable, and she did have red hair. She shot questions out at one in a most disconcerting way, and Dot was quite amazed and startled by the way Miss Pepperill pounced on Tess.

"Let's see your book, child," Miss Pepperill said, seizing Tess' recent purchase. "Ah – yes. So you are to be in my room, are you?"

"Yes, ma'am," admitted Tess, timidly.

"Ah – yes! What is the succession of the sovereigns of England? Name them!"

Now, if Miss Pepperill had demanded that Tess Kenway name the Pleiades, the latter would have been no more startled – or no less able to reply intelligently.

"Ah – yes!" snapped Miss Pepperill, seeing Tess' vacuous expression. "I shall ask you that the first day you are in my room. Be prepared to answer it. The succession of the sovereigns of England," and she swept on into the store, leaving the children on the sidewalk, wonderfully impressed.

They had walked over into the Parade Ground, and seated themselves on one of the park benches in sight of the old Corner House, as Milton people had called the Stower homestead, on the corner of Willow Street, from time immemorial. Tess' hopeless announcement followed their sitting on the bench for at least half an hour.

"Why, I can't never!" she sighed, making it positive by at least two negatives. "I never had an idea England had such an awful long string of kings. It's worse than the list of Presidents of the United States."

"Is it?" Dot observed, curiously. "It must be awful annoyable to have to learn 'em."

"Goodness, Dot! There you go again with one of your big words," exclaimed Tess, in vexation. "Who ever heard of 'annoyable' before? You must have invented that."

Dot calmly ignored the criticism. It must be confessed that she loved the sound of long words, and sometimes, as Agnes said, "made an awful mess of polysyllables." Agnes was the Kenway next older than Tess, while Ruth was seventeen, the oldest of all, and had for more than three years been the house-mother of the Kenway family.

Ruth and Agnes were at home in the old Corner House at this very hour. There lived in the big dwelling, with the four Corner House Girls, Aunt Sarah Maltby (who really was no relative of the girls, but a partial charge upon their charity), Mrs. MacCall, their housekeeper, and old Uncle Rufus, Uncle Peter Stower's black butler and general factotum, who had been left to the care of the old man's heirs when he died.

The first volume of this series, called "The Corner House Girls," told the story of the coming of the four sisters and Aunt Sarah Maltby to the Stower homestead, and of their first adventures in Milton – getting settled in their new home and making friends among their neighbors.

In "The Corner House Girls at School," the second volume, the four Kenway sisters extended the field of their acquaintance in Milton and thereabout, entered the local schools in the several grades to which they were assigned, made more friends and found some few rivals. They began to feel, too, that responsibility which comes with improved fortunes, for Uncle Peter Stower had left a considerable estate to the four girls, of which Mr. Howbridge, the lawyer, was administrator as well as the girls' guardian.

Now the second summer of their sojourn at the old Corner House was just ending, and the girls had but recently returned from a most delightful outing at Pleasant Cove, on the Atlantic Coast, some distance away from Milton, which was an inland town.

All the fun and adventure of that vacation are related in "The Corner House Girls Under Canvas," the third volume of the series, and the one immediately preceding the present story.

Tess was seldom vindictive; but after she had puzzled her poor brain for this half hour, trying to pick out and to get straight the Williams and Stephens and Henrys and Johns and Edwards and Richards, to say nothing of the Georges, who had reigned over England, she was quite flushed and excited.

"I know I'm just going to de-test that Miss Pepperpot!" she exclaimed. "I – I could throw this old history at her – I just could!"

"But you couldn't hit her, Tess," Dot observed placidly. "You know you couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because you can't throw anything straight – no straighter than Sammy Pinkney's ma. I heard her scolding Sammy the other day for throwing stones. She says, 'Sammy, don't you let me catch you throwing any more stones.'"

"And did he mind her?" asked Tess.

"I don't know," Dot replied reflectively. "But he says to her: 'What'll I do if the other fellers throw 'em at me?' 'Just you come and tell me, Sammy, if they do,' says Mrs. Pinkney."

"Well?" queried Tess, as her sister seemed inclined to stop.

"I didn't see what good that would do, myself," confessed Dot. "Telling Mrs. Pinkney, I mean. And Sammy says to her: 'What's the use of telling you, Ma? You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!' I don't think you could fling that hist'ry straight at Miss Pepperpot, Tess."

"Huh!" said Tess, not altogether pleased. "I feel I could hit her, anyway."

"Maybe Aggie could learn you the names of those sov-runs – "

"'Sovereigns'!" exclaimed Tess. "For pity's sake, get the word right, child!"

Dot pouted and Tess, being in a somewhat nagging mood – which was entirely strange for her – continued:

"And don't say 'learn' for 'teach.' How many times has Ruthie told you that?"

"I don't care," retorted Dorothy Kenway. "I don't think so much of the English language – or the English sov-er-reigns – so now! If folks can talk, and make themselves understood, isn't that enough?"

"It doesn't seem so," sighed Tess, despondent again as she glanced at the open history.

"Oh, I tell you what!" cried Dot, suddenly eager. "You ask Neale O'Neil. I'm sure he can help you. He teached me how to play jack-stones."

Tess ignored this flagrant lapse from school English, and said, rather haughtily:

"I wouldn't ask a boy."

"Oh, my! I would," Dot replied, her eyes big and round. "I'd ask anybody if I wanted to know anything very bad. And Neale O'Neil's quite the nicest boy that ever was. Aggie says so."

"Ruth and I don't approve of boys," Tess said loftily. "And I don't believe Neale knows the sovereigns of England. Oh! look at those men, Dot!"

Dot squirmed about on the bench to look out on Parade Street. An erecting gang of the telegraph company was putting up a pole. The deep hole had been dug for it beside the old pole, and the men, with spikes in their hands, were beginning to raise the new pole from the ground.

Two men at either side had hold of ropes to steady the big pine stick. Up it went, higher and higher, while the overseer stood at the butt to guide it into the hole dug in the sidewalk.

Just as the pole was about half raised into its place, and a lineman had gone quickly up a neighboring pole to fasten a guy-wire to hold it, the interested children on the park bench saw a woman crossing the street near the scene of the telegraph company men's activities.

"Oh, Tess!" Dot exclaimed. "What a funny dress she wears!"

"Yes," said the older Kenway girl, eying the woman quite as curiously as her sister.

The strange woman wore a long, gray cloak, and a little gray, close bonnet, with a stiff, white frill framing her face. That face was very sweet, but rather sad of expression. The children could not see her hair and had no means of guessing her age, for her cheeks were healthily pink and her gray eyes bright.

These facts Tess and Dot observed and digested in their small minds before the woman reached the curb.

"Isn't she pretty?" whispered Tess.

Before Dot could reply there sounded a wild cry from the man on the pole. The guy-wire had slipped.

"'Ware below!" he shouted.

The woman did not notice. Perhaps the close cap she wore kept her from hearing distinctly. The writhing wire flew through the air like a great snake.

Tess dropped her history and sprang up; but Dot did not loose her hold upon the rather battered "Alice-doll" which was her dearest possession. She clung, indeed, to the doll all the closer, but she screamed to the woman quite as loudly as Tess did, and her little blue-stockinged legs twinkled across the grass to the point of danger, quite as rapidly as did Tess' brown ones.

"Oh, lady! lady!" shrieked Tess. "You'll be killed!"

"Please come away from there —please!" cried Dot.

Their voices pierced to the strange lady's ears. Just as the pole began to waver and sink sidewise, despite the efforts of the men with the spikes, she looked up, saw the gesticulating children, observed the shadow of the pole and the writhing wire, and sprang upon the walk, and across it in time to escape the peril.

The wire's weight brought the pole down with a crash, in spite of all the men could do. But the woman in the gray cloak was safe with Tess and Dot on the greensward.

CHAPTER II
THE LADY IN THE GRAY CLOAK

"My dear girls!" the woman in the gray cloak said, with a hand on a shoulder of each of the younger Corner House girls, "how providential it was that you saw my danger. I am very much obliged to you. And how brave you both were!"

"Thank you, ma'am," said Tess, who seldom forgot her manners.

But Dot was greatly excited. "Oh, my!" she gasped, clinging tightly to the Alice-doll, and quite breathless. "My – my pulse did jump so!"

"Did it? You funny little thing," said the woman, half laughing and half crying. "What do you know about a pulse?"

"Oh, I know it's a muscle that bumps up and down, and the doctor feels it to see if you're better next time he comes," blurted out Dot, nothing loath to show what knowledge she thought she possessed.

"Oh, my dear!" cried the lady, laughing heartily now. And, dropping down upon the very bench where Tess and Dot had been sitting, she drew the two children to seats beside her. "Oh, my dear! I shall have to tell that to Dr. Forsyth."

"Oh!" ejaculated Tess, who was looking at the pink-cheeked lady with admiring eyes. "Oh! we know Dr. Forsyth. He is our doctor."

"Is he, indeed? And who are you?" responded the lady, the sad look on her face quite disappearing now that she talked so animatedly with the little Kenways.

"We are Dot and Tess Kenway," said Tess. "I'm Tess. We live just over there," and she pointed to the big, old-fashioned mansion across the Parade Ground.

"Ah, then," said the woman in the gray cloak, "you are the Corner House girls. I have heard of you."

"We are only two of them," said Dot, quickly. "There's four."

"Ah! then you are only half the quartette."

"I don't believe we are half– do you, Tess?" said Dot, seriously. "You see," she added to the lady, "Ruthie and Aggie are so much bigger than we are."

The lady in the gray cloak laughed again. "You are all four of equal importance, I have no doubt. And you must be very happy together – you sisters." The sad look returned to her face. "It must be lovely to have three sisters."

"Didn't you ever have any at all?" asked Dot, sympathetically.

"I had a sister once – one very dear sister," said the lady, thoughtfully, and looking away across the Parade Ground.

Tess and Dot gazed at each other questioningly; then Tess ventured to ask:

"Did she die?"

"I don't know," was the sad reply. "We were separated when we were very young. I can just remember my sister, for we were both little girls in pinafores. I loved my sister very much, and I am sure she loved me, and, if she is alive, misses me quite as much as I do her."

"Oh, how sad that is!" murmured Tess. "I hope you will find her, ma'am."

"Not to be thought of in this big world – not to be thought of now," repeated the lady, more briskly. She picked up the history that Tess had dropped. "And which of you little tots studies this? Isn't English history rather far advanced for you?"

"Tess is nawful smart," Dot hastened to say. "Miss Andrews says so, though she's a nawful strict teacher, too. Isn't she, Tess?"

Her sister nodded soberly. Her mind reverted at once to the sovereigns of England and Miss Pepperill. "I – I'm afraid I'm not very quick to learn, after all. Miss Pepperill will think me an awful dunce when I can't learn the sovereigns."

"The sovereigns?" repeated the woman in gray, with interest. "What sovereigns?"

So Tess (of course, with Dot's valuable help) explained her difficulty, and all about the new teacher Tess expected to have.

"And she'll think I'm awfully dull," repeated Tess, sadly. "I just can't make my mind remember the succession of those kings and queens. It's the hardest thing I ever tried to learn. Do you s'pose all English children have to learn it?"

"I know they have an easy way of committing to memory the succession of their sovereigns, from William the Conqueror, down to the present time," said the lady, thoughtfully. "Or, they used to have."

"Oh, dear me!" wailed Tess. "I wish I knew how to remember the old things. But I don't."

"Suppose I teach you the rhyme I learned when I was a very little girl at school?"

"Oh, would you?" cried Tess, her pretty face lighting up as she gazed admiringly again at the woman in the gray cloak.

"Yes. And we will add a couplet or two at the end to bring the list down to date – for there have been two more sovereigns since the good Queen Victoria passed away. Now attend! Here is the rhyme. I will recite it for you, and then I will write it down and you may learn it at your leisure."

Both Tess and Dot – and of course the Alice-doll – were very attentive as the lady recited:

 
"'First William, the Norman,
Then William, his son;
Henry, Stephen, and Henry,
Then Richard and John;
Next Henry the Third;
Edwards one, two, and three,
And again after Richard
Three Henrys we see;
Two Edwards, third Richard,
If rightly I guess,
Two Henrys, sixth Edward,
Queen Mary, Queen Bess,
Then Jamie, the Scotchman,
Then Charles, whom they slew,
Yet received after Cromwell
Another Charles, too;
Next James the Second
Ascended the throne;
Then good William and Mary
Together came on;
Till Anne, Georges four,
And fourth William, all past,
God sent Queen Victoria,
Who long was the last;
Then Edward, the Seventh
But shortly did reign,
With George, the Fifth,
England's present sovereign.'
 

There you have it – with an original four lines at the end to complete the list," laughed the lady.

Dot's eyes were big; she had lost the sense of the rhyme long before; but Tess was very earnest. "I – I believe I could learn 'em that way," she confessed. "I can remember poetry quite well. Can't I, Dot?"

"You recite 'Little Drops of Water, Little Grains of Sand' beautifully," said the smallest Corner House girl, loyally.

"Of course you can learn it," said the lady, confidently. "Now, Tess – is that your name – Theresa?"

"Yes, ma'am – only almost nobody ever calls me by it all. Miss Andrews used to when she was very, very angry. But I hope my new teacher, Miss Pepperill, won't be angry with me at all – if I can only learn these sovereigns."

"You shall," declared the lady in gray. "I have a pencil here in my bag. And here is a piece of paper. I will write it all out for you and you can study it from now until the day school opens. Then, when this Miss Pepperill demands it, you will have it pat – right on the end of your tongue."

"I hope so," said Tess, with dawning cheerfulness.

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

I believe I can learn to recite it all if you are kind enough to write it down."

The lady did so, writing the lines in a beautiful, round hand, and so plain that even Dot, who was a trifle "weak" in reading anything but print, could quite easily spell out the words.

"Weren't there any more names for kings when those lived?" the youngest Kenway asked seriously.

"Why, what makes you ask that?" asked the smiling lady.

"Maybe there weren't enough to go 'round," continued the puzzled Dot. "There are so many of 'em of one name – Williams, and Georges, and Edwardses. Don't English people have any more names to give to their sov-runs?"

"Sov-er-eigns," whispered Tess, sharply.

"That's what I mean," said the placid Dot. "The lady knows what I mean."

"Of course I do, dear," agreed the woman in the gray cloak. "But I expect the mothers of kings, like the mothers of other little boys, like to name their sons after their fathers.

"Now, children, I must go," she added briskly, getting up off the bench and handing Tess the written paper. "Good-bye. I hope I shall meet you both again very soon. Let me kiss you, Tess – and you, Dorothy Kenway. It has done me good to know you."

She kissed both children quickly, and then set off along the Parade Ground walk. Tess and Dot bade her good-bye shrilly, turning themselves toward the old Corner House.

"Oh, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, suddenly.

"What's the matter now?" asked Dot.

"We never asked the lady her name – or who she was."

"We-ell – would that be perlite?" asked Dot, doubtfully.

"Yes. She asked our names. We don't know anything about her – and I do think she is so nice!"

"So do I," agreed Dot. "And that gray cloak – "

"With the pretty little bonnet and ruche," added Tess.

"She isn't the Salvation Army," said Dot, remembering that that order was uniformed from seeing them on the streets of Bloomingsburg, where the Kenways had lived before they had fallen heir to Uncle Peter Stower's estate.

"Of course not!" Tess cried. "And she don't look like one o' those deaconesses that came to see Ethel Mumford's mother when she was sick – do you remember?"

"Of course I remember – everything!" said the positive Dot. "Wasn't I a great, big girl when we came to Milton to live?"

"Why – why," stammered her sister, not wishing to displease Dot, but bound to be honest. "You aren't a very big girl, even now, Dot Kenway."

"Humph!" exclaimed Dot, quite vexed. "I wear bigger shoes and stockings, and Ruth is having Miss Ann Titus let down the hems of all my old dresses a full inch – so now!"

"I expect you have grown some, Dot," admitted Tess, reflectively. "But you aren't big enough even now to brag about."

The youngest Kenway might have been deeply offended by this – and shown that she had taken offence, too – had something new not taken her attention at the very moment she and Tess were entering the side gate of the old Corner House premises.

The house was a three story and attic mansion which was set well back from Main Street, but the side of which was separated from Willow Street by only a narrow strip of sward. The kitchen was in the wing nearest this last-named street, and there was a big, half-enclosed side porch, to which the woodshed was attached, and beyond which was the long grape arbor.

The length of the old Corner House yard, running parallel with Willow Street, was much greater than its width. The garden, summer house, henhouses, and other outbuildings were at the back. The lawn in front was well shaded, and there were plenty of fruit trees around the house. Not many dwellings in Milton had as much yard-room as the Stower homestead.

"Oh my, Tess!" gasped Dot, with deep interest, staring at the porch stoop. "Who is that – and what's he doing?"

"Dear me!" returned Tess, hesitating at the gate. "That's Seneca Sprague – the man who wears a linen duster and straw hat all the year round, and 'most always goes barefooted. He – he isn't just right, they say, Dot."

"Just right about what?" asked Dot.

"Mercy me, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, exasperated.

"Well, what is he?" asked Dot, with vigor.

"Well – I guess," said Tess, "that he thinks he is a minister. And, I do declare, I believe he's preaching to Sandyface and her kittens! Listen, Dot!"