The Corner House Girls at School Part 8

The transom was open. There was a little rustling sound within. Then the light went out.

Neale broke the string and opened the bag of crackers. They were of the thick, hard variety known in New England as "Boston" crackers. He took out one and weighed it in his hand. It made a very proper missile.

With a single jerk of his arm he scaled the cracker through the open transom. There was a slight scuffle within, following the cracker's fall.

He paused a moment and then threw a second and a third. Each time the rustling was repeated, and Neale kept up the bombardment believing that, although the girls did not speak, the shower of crackers was falling upon the guilty.

One after the other he flung the crackers through the transom until they were all discharged. Not a sound now from the bombarded quarters.

Chuckling, Neale stole away, sure that he would have a big laugh on Agnes in the morning.

But before he got back into his wing of the house, he spied a candle with a girl in a pink kimono behind it.

"Whatever do you want out here, Neale O'Neil? A drink?"

It was Ruth. Neale was full of tickle over his joke, and he had to relate it.

"I've just been paying off that smart sister of yours in her own coin,"

he chuckled.

"Which smart sister?"

"Why, Agnes."

"But how?"

Neale told her how he had found the bag of crackers on the table beside his bed. "n.o.body but Aggie would be up to such a trick, I know,"

chuckled Neale. "So I just pitched 'em all through the transom at her."

"What transom?" gasped Ruth, in dismay. "Where did you throw them?"

"Why, right through _that_ one," and Neale pointed. "Isn't that the room you and Aggie occupy?"

"My goodness' sakes alive!" cried Ruth, awe-struck. "What _have_ you done, Neale O'Neil? _That's Aunt Sarah's room._"

Ruth rushed to the door, tried it, found it unbolted, and ran in. Her candle but dimly revealed the apartment; but it gave light enough to show that Aunt Sarah was not in evidence.

Almost in the middle of the room stood the big "four-poster," with canopy and counterpane, the fringe of which reached almost to the rag carpet that covered the floor. A cracker crunched under Ruth's slipper-shod foot. Indeed, crackers were everywhere! No part of the room--save beneath the bed itself--had escaped the bombardment.

"Mercy on us!" gasped Ruth, and ran to the bed. She lifted a corner of the counterpane and peered under. A pair of bare heels were revealed and beyond them--supposedly--was the remainder of Aunt Sarah!

"Aunt Sarah! Aunt Sarah! do come out," begged Ruth.

"The ceilin's fallin', Niece Ruth," croaked the old lady. "This rickety old shebang is a-fallin' to pieces at last. I allus told your Uncle Peter it would."

"No, no, Aunt Sarah, it's all right!" cried Ruth. Then she remembered Neale and knew if she told the story bluntly, Aunt Sarah would never forgive the boy.

"Do, _do_ come out," she begged, meanwhile scrambling about, herself, to pick up the crackers. She collected most of them that were whole easily enough. But some had broken and the pieces had scattered far and wide.

With some difficulty the old lady crept out from under the far side of the bed. She was ready to retire, her nightcap securely tied under her chin, and all.

When Ruth, much troubled by a desire to laugh, asked her, she explained that the first missile had landed upon her head while she was kneeling beside the bed at her devotions.

"I got up and another of the things. .h.i.t me on the ear," pursued Aunt Sarah, short and sharp. "Another landed in the small of my back, and I went over into that corner. But pieces of the ceiling were droppin' all over and no matter where I got to, they hit me. So I dove under the bed----"

"Oh! you poor, dear Auntie!"

"If the dratted ceilin's all comin' down, this ain't no place for us to stay," quoth Aunt Sarah.

"I am sure it is all over," urged Ruth. "But if you'd like to go to another room----?"

"And sleep in a bed that ain't been aired in a dog's age?" snapped Aunt Sarah. "I guess not."

"Then, will you come and sleep with me? Aggie can go into the children's room."

"No. If you are sure there ain't no more goin' to fall?"

"I am positive, Auntie."

"Then I'm going to bed," declared the old lady. "But I allus told Peter this old place was bound to go to rack and ruin because o' his miserliness."

Ruth waited till her aunt got into bed, where she almost at once fell asleep. Then the girl scrambled for the remainder of the broken crackers and carried them all out into the hall in the trash basket.

Neale O'Neil was sitting on the top step of the front stairs, waiting for her appearance.

"Well! I guess I did it that time," he said. "She looked at me savage enough to bite, at supper. What's she going to do now--have me arrested and hung?" and he grinned suddenly.

"Oh, Neale!" gasped Ruth, overcome with laughter. "How could you?"

"I thought you girls were in there. I was giving Aggie her crackers back," Neale grunted.

Ruth explained to him how the crackers had come to be left in his room.

Agnes had had nothing to do with it. "I guess the joke is on you, after all, Neale," she said, obliged to laugh in the end.

"Or on that terrible old lady."

"But she doesn't know it is a joke. I don't know what she'll say to-morrow when she sees that none of the ceiling has fallen."

Fortunately Aunt Sarah supplied an explanation herself--and nothing could have shaken her belief in her own opinion. One of her windows was dropped down half way from the top. She was sure that some "rascally boy" outside (she glared at Neale O'Neil when she said it at the breakfast table) had thrown crackers through the window. She had found some of the crumbs.

"And I'll ketch him some day, and then----" She shook her head grimly and relapsed into her accustomed silence.

So Neale did not have to confess his fault and try to make peace with Aunt Sarah. It would have been impossible for him to do this last, Ruth was sure.

But the story of the bag of crackers delighted Agnes. She teased Neale about it unmercifully, and he showed himself to be better-natured and more patient, than Ruth had at first supposed him to be.

The next few days following the appearance of Neale O'Neil at the old Corner House were busy ones indeed. School would open the next week and there was lots to do before that important event.

Brooms searched out dust, long-handled brushes searched out cobwebs, and the first and second floors of the old Corner House were subjected to a thorough renovation.