The Corner House Girls at School Part 16

"Oh, Uncle Rufus! you don't mean that, do you?" asked Tess, the literal.

"Aren't there as many as five mice left? You know you said yourself there were hundreds before Sandyface and her children came."

"Glo-_ree_! I done s'peck dey got down to purty few numbers," agreed Uncle Rufus. "Hi! wot dat cat do now?"

"Scat!" cried Mrs. MacCall. She had left the table for a moment, and Popocatepetl was upon it.

"Petal!" shrieked Ruth, and darted for the pantry to seize her pet.

All three scolding her, and making for her, made Popocatepetl quite hysterical. She arched her back, spit angrily, and then dove from the table. In her flight she overturned the china cup of mola.s.ses which fell to the floor and broke. The sticky liquid was scattered far and wide.

"That kitten!" Mrs. MacCall shrieked.

"Wait! wait!" begged Ruth, trying to grab up Petal.

But the cat dodged her and went right through the mola.s.ses on the floor.

All her four paws were covered. Wherever she stepped she left an imprint. And when the excited Ruth grabbed for her again, she capped her ridiculous performance by leaping right into the box of feathers!

Finding herself hopelessly "stuck-up" now, Popocatepetl went completely crazy!

She leaped from the box, scattering a trail of sticky feathers behind her. She made a single lap around the kitchen trying for an outlet, faster than any kitten had ever traveled before in that room.

"Stop her!" shrieked Ruth.

"My clean kitchen!" wailed Mrs. MacCall.

"Looker dem fedders! looker dem fedders!" gasped Uncle Rufus. "She done got dem all stuck on her fo' sho'!"

"Oh, oh!" squealed Tess and Dot, in chorus, and clinging together as Petal dashed past them.

Just at this moment Agnes opened the door and saw what appeared to be an animated feather-boa das.h.i.+ng about the kitchen, with the bulk of the family in pursuit.

"What for goodness' sake is the matter?" gasped Agnes.

Popocatepetl saw the open door and she went through it as though she had been shot out of a gun, leaving a trail of feathers in her wake and splotches of mola.s.ses all over the kitchen floor.

CHAPTER X

THE ICE STORM

The four girls followed Popocatepetl out of the house in a hurry. Their shrill voices aroused Neale O'Neil where he was spading up a piece of Mr. Con Murphy's garden for a planting of winter spinach. He came over the fence in a hurry and ran up the long yard.

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" he shouted.

The chorus of explanation was so confused that Neale might never have learned the difficulty to this very moment, had he not looked up into the bare branches of the Keifer pear tree and seen an object clinging close to a top limb.

"For pity's sake!" he gasped. "What is that?"

"It's Petal," shrilled Dot. "An' she's felled into the merla.s.ses and got herself all feathers."

At that her sisters burst out laughing. It was too bad the little cat was so frightened, but it _was_ too comical for anything!

"You don't call that a cat?" demanded Neale, when he could control his own risibilities.

"Of course it's a cat," said Tess, rather warmly. "You know Ruthie's Popocatepetl, Neale--you know you do."

"But a thing with feathers, roosting in a tree, must be some kind of a fowl--yes?" asked Neale, with gravity.

"It's a cat-bird," announced Agnes.

The younger girls could not see any fun in the situation. Poor Petal, clinging to the high branch of the tree, and faintly mewing, touched their hearts, so Neale went up like a professional acrobat and after some difficulty brought the frightened cat down.

"She'll have to be plucked just like a chicken," declared Ruth. "Did you _ever_ see such a mess in all your life?"

Neale held the cat so she could not scratch, and Agnes and Ruth "plucked" her and wiped off the mola.s.ses as best they could. But it was several days before Popocatepetl was herself again.

By this time, too, Neale O'Neil's green halo was beginning to wear off.

As Mr. Con Murphy said, he looked less like "a blus.h.i.+n' grane onion"

than he had immediately after the concoction the drugstore clerk had sold him took effect.

"And 'tis hopin' 'twill be a lesson ye'll allus remimber," pursued the old cobbler. "Niver thrust too much to whativer comes in a bottle!

Remimber 'tis not the label ye air to use. The only r'ally honest label that kems out of a drug-sth.o.r.e is thim that has the skull and crossbones on 'em. You kin be sure of them; they're pizen an' no mistake!"

Neale had to listen to a good deal that was harder to bear than any of Mr. Murphy's quaint philosophy. But he restrained himself and did not fight any boy going to school.

In the first place, Neale O'Neil was going to school for just one purpose. He wished to learn. To boys and girls who had always had the advantages of school, this desire seemed strange enough. They could not understand Neale.

And because of his earnestness about study, and because he refused to tell anything about himself, they counted Neale odd. The Corner House girls were the only real friends the boy had in Milton among the young folk. But some older people began to count Neale as a boy of promise.

Green as his head was dyed, it was a perfectly good head when it came to study, as he had a.s.sured Mr. Marks. The princ.i.p.al watched the youngster and formed a better opinion of him than he had at first borne. Miss s.h.i.+pman found him a perfectly satisfactory scholar.

The people he worked for at odd jobs, after and before school, learned that he was faithful and smart. Mr. Con Murphy had a good word for the boy to everybody who came into his shop.

Yet, withal, he could not make close friends. One must give confidence for confidence if one wishes to make warm friends.h.i.+ps. And Neale was as secretive as he could be.

Neale kept close to the neighborhood of the cobbler's and the old Corner House. Agnes told Ruth that she believed Neale never turned a corner without first peeking around it! He was always on the _qui vive_--expecting to meet somebody of whom he was afraid. And every morning he ran over to the Corner House early and looked at the first column on the front page of the _Morning Post_, as it lay on the big veranda.

The four Corner House girls all achieved some distinction in their school grades within the first few weeks of the fall term. Ruth made friends as she always did wherever she went. Other girls did not get a sudden "crush" on Ruth Kenway, and then as quickly forget her.

Friends.h.i.+p for her was based upon respect and admiration for her sense and fine qualities of character.

Agnes fought her way as usual to the semi-leaders.h.i.+p of her cla.s.s, Trix Severn to the contrary notwithstanding. She was not quite as good friends with Eva Larry as she had been, and had soon cooled a trifle toward Myra Stetson, but there were dozens of other girls to pick and choose from, and in rotation Agnes became interested in most of those in her grade.

Tess was the one who came home with the most adventures to tell. There always seemed to be "something doing" in Miss Andrews' room.

"We're all going to save our money toward a Christmas tree for our room," Tess announced, long before cold weather had set in "for keeps."

"Miss Andrews says we can have one, but those that aren't good can have nothing to do with it. I'm afraid," added Tess, seriously, "that not many of the boys in our grade will have anything to do with that tree."