The Corner House Girls at School Part 4

"My goodness! what are you doing down there, Aggie?" demanded Ruth. "And who's that with you!"

"I--I got up to get a peach, Ruthie," explained Agnes, rather stammeringly. "And I asked the boy to have one, too."

Ruth, looking out of the bedroom window, expressed her amazement at this statement by a long, blank stare at her sister and the white-haired boy.

Agnes felt that there was further explanation due from her.

"You see," she said, "he--he just saved my life--perhaps."

"How is that?" gasped Ruth. "Were you going to eat _all_ those peaches by yourself! They might have killed you, that's a fact."

"No, no!" cried Agnes, while the boy's face flushed up darkly again. "He saved me from falling out of the tree."

"Out of the tree? _This_ tree!" demanded Ruth. "How did you get into it?"

"From--from the window."

"Goodness! you never! And with your bathrobe on!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Ruth, her eyes opening wider.

As an "explainer," Agnes was deficient. But she tried to start the story all over again. "Hus.h.!.+" commanded Ruth, suddenly. "Wait till I come down. We'll have everybody in the house awake, and it is too early."

She disappeared and the boy looked doubtfully at Agnes. "Is she the oldest sister you spoke of?"

"Yes. That's Ruth."

"She's kind of bossy, isn't she?"

"Oh! but we like to be bossed by Ruthie. She's just like mother was to us," declared Agnes.

"I shouldn't think you'd like it," growled the white-haired boy. "I hate to be bossed--and I won't be, either!"

"You have to mind in school," said Agnes, slowly.

"That's another thing," said the boy. "But I wouldn't let another boy boss me."

In five minutes Ruth was down upon the back porch, too. She was neat and fresh and smiling. When Ruth smiled, dimples came at the corners of her mouth and the laughter jumped right out of her eyes at you in a most unexpected way. The white-haired boy evidently approved of her, now that he saw her close to.

"Tell me how it happened!" commanded Ruth of her sister, and Agnes did so. In the telling the boy lost nothing of courage and dexterity, you may be sure!

"Why, that's quite wonderful!" cried Ruth, smiling again at the boy. "It was awfully rash of you, Aggie, but it was providential this--this--You haven't told me his name?"

"Why! I don't know it myself," confessed Agnes.

"And after all he did for you!" exclaimed Ruth, in admonition.

"Aw--it wasn't anything," growled the boy, with all the s.e.x's objection to being thought a hero.

"You must be very strong--a regular athlete," declared Ruth.

"Any other boy could do it."

"No!"

"If he knew how," limited the white-haired boy.

"And how did you learn so much!" asked Ruth, curiously.

Again the red flushed into his pale face. "Practicin'. That's all," he said, rather doggedly.

"Won't you tell us who you are?" asked Ruth, feeling that the boy was keeping up a wall between them.

"Neale O'Neil."

"Do you live in Milton?"

"I do now."

"But I never remember seeing you before," Ruth said, puzzled.

"I only came to stay yesterday," confessed the boy, and once more he grinned and his eyes were roguish.

"Oh! then your folks have just moved in?"

"I haven't any folks."

"No family at all?"

"No, ma'am," said Neale O'Neil, rather sullenly Ruth thought

"You are not all alone--a boy like you?"

"Why not?" demanded he, tartly. "I'm 'most as old as you are."

"But _I_ am not all alone," said Ruth, pleasantly. "I have the girls--my sisters; and I have Aunt Sarah--and Mr. Howbridge."

"Well, I haven't anybody," confessed Neale O'Neil, rather gloomily.

"You surely have some friends?" asked Ruth, not only curious, but sympathetic.

"Not here. I'm alone, I tell you." Yet he did not speak so ungratefully now. It was impressed upon his mind that Ruth's questions were friendly.

"And I am going to school here. I've got some money saved up. I want to find a boarding place where I can part pay my board, perhaps, by working around. I can do lots of things."

"I see. Look after furnaces, and clean up yards, and all that?"

"Yes," said the boy, with heightened interest. "This other one--your sister--says you have plenty of empty rooms in this big house. Would you take a boarder?"

"Goodness me! I never thought of such a thing."

"You took in that Mrs. Treble and Double Trouble," whispered Agnes, who rather favored the suit of the white-haired boy.