The Corner House Girls at School Part 14

"I--I guess it's _set_. Maybe I've done more harm than good. It's a sort of a sickly green all over. I never _did_ see such a head of hair, Neale! And it was so pretty before."

"_Pretty!_" growled Neale O'Neil. "It was a nuisance. Everybody who ever saw me remembered me as the 'white-haired boy.'"

"Well," sighed Agnes, "whoever sees that hair of yours _now_ will remember you, and no mistake."

"And I have to go to school with it to-morrow," groaned Neale.

"It will grow out all right--in time," said the girl, trying to be comforting.

"It'll take more time than I want to spend with green hair," returned Neale. "I see what I'll have to do, Aggie."

"What's that?"

"Get a Riley cut. I don't know but I'd better be _shaved_."

"Oh, Neale! you'll look so funny," giggled Agnes, suddenly becoming hysterical.

"That's all right. You have a right to laugh," said Neale, as Agnes fell back upon a box to have her laugh out. "But I won't be any funnier looking with _no_ hair than I would be with green hair--make up your mind to that."

Neale slipped over the back fence into Mr. Murphy's premises, before the rest of the Kenway family came home, and the girls did not see him again that day.

"How the folks stared at us!" Ruth said, shaking her head. "It would have been all right if you hadn't gotten up and gone out with him, Aggie."

"Oh, yes! let that horrid old Deacon Abel put him out of church just as though he were a stray dog, and belonged to n.o.body!" cried Agnes.

"Well, he doesn't belong to us, does he?" asked Dot, wonderingly.

"We're the only folks he has, I guess, Dot," said Tess, as Agnes went off with her head in the air.

"He has Mr. Murphy--and the pig," said Dot, slowly. "But I like Neale.

Only I wish he hadn't painted his hair so funny."

"I'd like to have boxed his ears--that I would!" said Mrs. MacCall, in vexation. "I thought gals was crazy enough nowadays; but to think of a _boy_ dyeing his hair!"

Aunt Sarah shook her head and pursed her lips, as one who would say, "I knew that fellow would come to some bad end." But Uncle Rufus, having heard the story, chuckled unctuously to himself.

"Tell yo' what, chillen," he said to the girls, "it 'mind me ob de time w'en my Pechunia was a young, flighty gal. Dese young t'ings, dey ain't nebber satisfied wid de way de good Lawd make 'em.

"I nebber did diskiver w'y Pechunia was so brack, as I say afore. But 'tain't an affliction. She done t'ink it was. She done talk erbout face-bleach, an' powder, an' somet'ing she call 'rooch' wot white sa.s.siety wimmens fixes up deir faces wid, an' says she ter me, 'Pap, I is gwine fin' some ob dese yere fixin's fur my complexion.'

"'Yo' go 'long,' I says ter her. 'Yo's a _fast_ brack, an' dat's all dere is to hit. Ef all de watah an' soap yo' done use ain't take no particle of dat soot off'n yo' yit, dere ain't nottin' eber _will_ remove it.'

"But yo' kyan't change a gal's natur. Pechunia done break her back ober de washtub ter earn de money to buy some o' dem make-up stuff, an' she goes down ter de drug sto' ter mak' her purchases. She 'low ter spen'

much as six bits fer de trash.

"An' firs' t'ing she axed for was face powder--aw, my glo-_ree_! De clerk ask her: 'Wot shade does yo' want, Ma'am? An' Pechunia giggles an'

replies right back:

"'Flesh color, Mister.'

"An' wot you t'ink dat young scalawag ob a clerk gib her?" chuckled Uncle Rufus, rolling his eyes and shaking his head in delight. "W'y, he done gib her _powdered charcoal_! Dat finish Pechunia. She nebber tried to buy nottin' mo' for her complexion--naw, indeedy!"

The girls of the old Corner House learned that Neale was up early on Monday morning, having remained in hiding the remainder of Sunday. He sought out a neighbor who had a pair of sheep-shears, and Mr. Murphy cropped the boy's hair close to his scalp. The latter remained a pea-green color and being practically hairless, Neale looked worse than a Mexican dog!

He was not at all the same looking youth who had dawned on Agnes' vision the Monday morning previous, and had come to her rescue. She said herself she never would have known him.

"Oh, dear!" she said to Ruth. "He looks like a gnome out of a funny picture-book."

But Neale O'Neil pulled his cap down to his ears and followed behind the Kenway girls to school. He was too proud and too sensitive to walk with them.

He knew that he was bound to be teased by the boys at school, when once they saw his head. Even the old cobbler had said to him:

"'Tis a foine lookin' noddle ye have now. Ye look like a tinder grane onion sproutin' out of the garden in the spring. Luk out as ye go over th' fince, me la-a-ad, for if that ormadhoun of a goat sees ye, he'll ate ye alive!"

This was at the breakfast table, and Neale had flushed redly, being half angry with the old fellow.

"That's right, la-a-ad," went on Mr. Murphy. "Blus.h.i.+n' ain't gone out o'

fas.h.i.+on where you kem from, I'm glad ter see. An' begorra! ye're more pathriotic than yer name implies, for I fear that's Scotch instead of Irish. I see now ye've put the grane above the red!"

So Neale went to school on this first day in no very happy frame of mind. He looked so much different with his hair cropped, from what he had at church on Sunday, that few of the young folks who had observed his disgrace there, recognized him--for which the boy was exceedingly glad.

He remained away from the Kenway girls, and in that way escaped recognition. He had to get acquainted with some of the fellows--especially those of the highest grammar grade. Being a new scholar, he had to meet the princ.i.p.al of the school, as well as Miss s.h.i.+pman.

"Take your cap off, sir," said Mr. Marks, sternly. Unwillingly enough he did so. "For goodness' sake! what have you been doing to your head?"

demanded the princ.i.p.al.

"Getting my hair clipped, sir," said Neale.

"But the color of your head?"

"That's why I had the hair clipped."

"What did you do to it?"

"It was an accident, sir," said Neale. "But I can study just as well."

"We will hope so," said the princ.i.p.al, his eyes twinkling. "But green is not a promising color."

Ruth had taken Dot to the teacher of the first grade, primary, and Dot was made welcome by several little girls whom she had met at Sunday school during the summer. Then Ruth hurried to report to the princ.i.p.al of the Milton High School, with whom she had already had an interview.

Tess found her grade herself. It was the largest room in the whole building and was presided over by Miss Andrews--a lady of most uncertain age and temper, and without a single twinkle in her grey-green eyes.

But with Tess were several girls she knew--Mable Creamer; Margaret and Holly Pease; Maria Maroni, whose father kept the vegetable and fruit stand in the cellar of one of the Stower houses on Meadow Street; Uncle Rufus' granddaughter, Alfredia (with the big red ribbon bow); and a little Yiddish girl named Sadie Goronofsky, who lived with her step-mother and a lot of step-brothers and sisters in another of the tenements on Meadow Street which had been owned so many years by Uncle Peter Stower.

Agnes and Neale O 'Neil met in the same grade, but they did not have a chance to speak, for the boys sat on one side of the room, and the girls on the other.

The second Kenway girl had her own troubles. During the weeks she lived at the old Corner House, she had been looking forward to entering school in the fall, so she had met all the girls possible who were to be in her grade.

Now she found that, school having opened, the girls fell right back into their old a.s.sociations. There were the usual groups, or cliques. She would have to earn her place in the school, just as though she did not know a soul.