The Corner House Girls at School Part 13

His face was very red, and he shook an admonitory finger at the startled Neale O'Neil.

"Young man!" he said, sonorously. "Young man, you take off that wig and put it in your pocket--or leave this place of wors.h.i.+p immediately."

It was an awful moment--especially awful for everybody in the Kenway pew. The girls' cheeks burned. Mrs. MacCall glared at the boy in utter stupefaction.

Deacon Abel was a very stern man indeed--much more so than the clergyman himself. All the young folk of the congregation stood in particular awe of him.

But poor Neale O'Neil, unconscious of any wrong intent, merely gazed at the old gentleman in surprise. "Wha--wha--_what_?" he gasped.

"Get out of here, young man!" exclaimed the deacon. "You have got the whole crowd by the ears. A most disgraceful exhibition. If I had the warming of your jacket I certainly would be glad."

"Oh!" exclaimed Ruth, horrified.

Agnes was really angry. She was an impulsive girl and she could not fail to espouse the cause of anybody whom she considered "put upon." She rose right up when Neale stumbled to his feet.

"Never you mind, Neale!" she whispered, shrilly. "He's a mean old thing!

I'm coming, too."

It was a very wrong thing to say, but Agnes never stopped to think how a thing was going to sound when she was angry. The boy, his face aflame, got out through the next pew, which chanced to be empty, and Agnes followed right on behind him before Ruth could pull her back into her seat.

n.o.body could have stopped her. She felt that Neale O'Neil was being ill-treated, and whatever else you could say about Aggie Kenway, you could not truthfully say that she was not loyal to her friends.

"Cheap! cheap! cheap!" squeaked the deacon's boots as he went back up one aisle while the boy and girl hurried up the other. It seemed to Neale as though the church was filled with eyes, staring at him.

His red face was a fine contrast for his rainbow-hued hair, but Agnes was as white as chalk.

The minister took up his discourse almost immediately, but it seemed to the culprits making their way to the door as though the silence had held the congregation for an hour! They were glad to get through the baize doors and let them swing together behind them.

Neale clapped his cap on his head, hiding a part of the ruin, but Deacon Abel came out and attacked him hotly:

"What do you mean by such disgraceful actions, boy?" he asked, with quivering voice. "I don't know who you are--you are a stranger to me; but I warn you never to come here and play such jokes again----"

"It isn't a joke, Mr. Abel!" cried Agnes.

"What do you call it, then? Isn't that one of them new-fangled wigs I read folks in the city wear to dances and other affairs? What's he got it on for?"

"It isn't a wig," Agnes said, while Neale clutched wildly at his hair.

"Don't tell me it's his own hair!" almost shouted the old gentleman.

"What's the matter with my hair?" demanded the puzzled boy.

"Doesn't he know? Do you mean to say he doesn't know what his head looks like?" cried the amazed deacon. "Come! come into this room, boy, and look at your hair."

There was the ushers' dressing-room at one end of the vestibule; he led Neale in by the arm. In the small mirror on the wall the boy got a fairly accurate picture of his hirsute adornment.

Without a word--after his first gasp of amazement--Neale turned and walked out of the room, and out of the church. It was a hot Sunday and the walks were bathed in suns.h.i.+ne. Neale involuntarily took the path across the Parade in the direction of the old Corner House.

At this hour--in the middle of sermon time--there was scarcely anybody in sight. Milton observed Sunday most particularly--especially in this better quarter of the town.

Neale had gone some way before he realized that Agnes was just beside him. He looked around at her and now his face was very pale.

"What did you come for?" he asked her, ungraciously enough.

"I'm so sorry, Neale," the girl whispered, drawing nearer to his elbow.

The boy stared for a moment, and then exclaimed: "Why, Aggie! you're a good little sport, all right."

Aggie blushed vividly, but she hastened to say: "Why did you do it, Neale?"

"I--I can't tell you," replied the boy, in some confusion. "Only I got to change the color of my hair."

"But, mercy! you needn't have changed it to so many colors all at once!"

cried she.

"Huh! do you think--like that old man--that I did it a-purpose?"

"But you _did_ dye it!"

"I tried to."

"That was the stuff you were buying yesterday in the drugstore?" she queried.

"Yes. And I put it on just before I started for church. He said it would make the hair a beautiful brown."

"_Who_ said so?"

"That drugstore clerk," said Neale, despondently.

"He never sold you hair-dye at all!"

"Goodness knows what it was----"

"It's stained your collar--and it's run down your neck and dyed _that_ green."

"Do you suppose I can ever get it off, Aggie?" groaned the boy.

"We'll try. Come on home and we'll get a lot of soapsuds in a tub in the woodshed--so we can splash it if we want to," said the suddenly practical Agnes.

They reached the woodshed without being observed by Uncle Rufus. Agnes brought the water and the soap and a hand-brush from the kitchen. Neale removed his collar and tie, and turned back the neck of his s.h.i.+rt. Agnes ap.r.o.ned her Sunday frock and went to work.

But, sad to relate, the more she scrubbed, and the more Neale suffered, the worse his hair looked!

"Goodness, Aggie!" he gasped at last. "My whole scalp is as sore as a boil. I don't believe I can stand your scrubbing it any more."

"I don't mean to hurt you, Neale," panted Agnes.

"I know it. But isn't the color coming out?"