Chapter XXV The End of the Outing
Tess and Dot Kenway had a very serious matter to decide. Ruth had determined that, as they were all enjoying themselves at Pleasant Cove so much, the Corner House flag should continue to wave for a time longer over their tent in the Willowbend Camp.
But there was something at home in Milton, at the old Corner House itself, that the younger girls thought they must attend to.
“It’s really a nawful state of affairs,” Tess declared, nodding her sunny head, gravely, and with her lips pursed up. “They are growing right up without knowing their own names. Why! I don’t see how their own mother knows them apart.”
“Oh!” gasped Dot, to whom this was a new idea indeed. “I never thought of that.”
“Well, it’s so,” said Tess. “I—I wish Ruth had sent for them and had had them brought down here when Rosa and Tom Jonah came.”
“But they couldn’t leave their mother, Tess,” objected Dot. “They’re too small.”
“I—don’t—know,” said Tess, doubtfully. “At any rate, it’s high time they were named. You know, Mrs. MacCall says so herself.”
Dot picked up the letter that the kind housekeeper at the old Corner House had written especially to the two smaller Kenway girls.
“She says they chase their tails all day long and they have had to put them out in the woodshed to keep them from being under foot,” Dot said, reading slowly, for Mrs. MacCall’s writing was not like print.
“They must be named,” repeated Tess, with conviction.
“But Ruth won’t let us go home to do it,” quoth Dot.
“And I don’t want to. Do you?” demanded Tess, hastily. “I don’t want to leave the beach now, just when we’re having so much fun.”
Neither did Dot. But the state of the unchristened kittens—the youngest family of Sandyface—troubled her exceedingly.
Tess, however, suddenly had one of her very brilliant ideas. “I tell you what let’s do!” she cried.
“What?”
“Let’s write Mrs. MacCall and Uncle Rufus a letter, and ask them to name Sandyface’s children their own selves.”
“But—but we want to name them,” cried Dot.
“Goosey!” exclaimed Tess. “We’ll choose the names; but Mrs. MacCall and Uncle Rufus can give them to the kittens. Don’t you see?”
“Oh, Tess! we might,” agreed Dot, delighted.
Tess ran to the tent for paper and pencil, and bespoke the favor of an envelope addressed in ink to Mrs. MacCall.
“Of course, I’ll address one for you,” said Ruth, kindly. “But what’s all the hurry about writing home?”
Tess explained the necessity that had arisen. Sandyface’s family of kittens was growing up without being christened—and something might happen to them.
“You know,” said Tess, gravely, “it would be dreadful if one of them died and we didn’t know what to put on the headboard. It would be dreadful!”
“And what names shall we send Mrs. MacCall?” Dot wanted to know, when Tess had started the letter “Deare Missus Mcall” and was chewing the pencil as an aid to further thought.
“Let’s call them by seashore names,” suggested Tess. “Then they’ll remind us of the fun we had here at Pleasant Cove.”
“Oh-oo! Let’s,” agreed Dot.
“Well, now,” said Tess, promptly. “What will be the very first one? I’ll write Mrs. MacCall what we want,” and she proceeded to indite the following paragraph to begin the letter:
“We are having so much fun down here at plesent cove that we cant find time to come home and name Sandface’s babbies. But we want you and unc rufs to do it for us and we are going to send you the names we chose. They are——”
Here Tess’s laboring pencil came to a full stop. “Now, you got the first name, Dot?” she asked.
“I got two,” declared Dot, confidently.
“What are they!” queried Tess. “Now, we want them to be real salt-water names. Just like fishes’ names—or boats’ names—or like that.”
“I got two,” declared Dot, soberly. “Lots of men must be named those names about here. I hear them hollerin’ to each other when they are out in the boats.”
“Well, well!” cried Tess, impatiently. “What are the names?”
“One’s ‘Starboard’ and the other’s ‘Port,’” declared Dot, seriously. “And they are real nice names, I think.”
Tess was rather taken aback. She had a hazy opinion that “Starboard” and “Port” were not Christian names; they might be, however, and she had heard them herself a good deal. Besides, she wanted to agree with Dot if she could, and so she sighed and wrote as follows:
“We got to names alreddy, Missus Mcall, and one’s Starborde and the other is Port. They are very pretty names, we think and we hope you an unc rufs and Sandface will like them, to. You give them to the kittens that they seem to fit the best, pleas.”
Neale, and Ruth, and Agnes came along some time afterward and found the smaller Corner House girls reduced almost to a state of distraction. They had been unable to decide upon two more names. “Starboard” and “Port” had been inspired, it seemed. Now they were “stuck.”
“It does seem as though there should be some other seashore names that would sound good for kittens,” sighed Tess. “I think ‘Starboard’ and ‘Port’ are real pretty—don’t you, Ruth?”
“Very fine,” agreed her older sister, while Agnes restrained her giggles.
“Why not call one of the others ‘Hard-a-Lee’?” suggested Neale, gravely.
“Is that a seashore name?” asked Tess, doubtfully.
“Just as salt as a dried codfish,” declared Neale, confidently.
“I think it is real pretty,” Dot ventured.
“Then we’ll call the third one ‘Hard-a-Lee,’” declared Tess. “I’ll tell Mrs. MacCall so,” and she laboriously went at the misspelled letter again.
“But how about the fourth one?” asked Agnes, laughing. “He’s not going to be a step-child, is he? Isn’t he to have a name?”
“Yes. We must have one more,” Tess said, wearily. “Won’t you give us one, Aggie?”
“Sure!” said Agnes, promptly. “Main-sheet.’”
“‘Starboard, Port, Hard-a-Lee and Main-sheet.’ Some names, those!” declared Neale.
“I like them,” Tess said, reflectively. “They don’t sound like other cats’ names—do they, Ruthie?”
“They most certainly do not,” admitted the oldest Corner House girl.
“And are they pretty, Ruthie?” asked Dot.
“They are better than ‘pretty,’” agreed Ruth, kindly. “If you children are suited, I am sure everybody else—including the kittens themselves—will be pleased!”
The labored letter was therefore finished and sent away. As Dot said, “it lifted a great load from their minds.”
But there was another matter that served to trouble all four of the Corner House girls for some days. That was what Mr. Reynolds, the lumberman, was going to do about Tom Jonah.
The girls seldom left their tent now without taking the dog with them. He was something of a nuisance in the boat when they went crabbing; but Agnes would not hear of going out without him.
“I know that man will come back here some time and try to get him away,” she declared. “But Tom Jonah will never go of his own free will—no, indeed!”
“And he won’t sell him again, he said,” sighed Ruth. “I don’t just see what we can do.”
However, this trouble did not keep the Corner House girls from having many good times with their girl friends at the Spoondrift bungalow, and their boy friends on the beach.
There were fishing trips, and picnics on Wild Goose Island. They sometimes went outside the cove in bigger boats, and fished on the “banks,” miles and miles off shore. There was fun in the evenings, too, at the hotel dances, although the Corner House girls did not attend any of those held at the Overlook House, for they were not exactly friendly with Trix Severn.
One day Pearl Harrod’s Uncle Phil arranged to take a big party of the older girls to Shawmit, which was some miles up the river. Ruth and Agnes went along and that day they left Tom Jonah at Willowbend to take care of the smaller girls.
Ruth determined to see Mr. Reynolds, so when they reached Shawmit, she hunted up the lumberman’s office. She found him in a more amiable mood than he had been on the morning he drove to Pleasant Cove to get Tom Jonah.
“Well, Miss!” he said. “How do you feel about giving up that dog?”
“Just the same, sir,” said Ruth, honestly. “But I hope you will tell me who the man is you sold Tom Jonah to, so that we can go to him and buy the dog.”
“Do you girls really want old Tom Jonah as much as that?” asked Mr. Reynolds.
“Yes, sir,” said the girl, simply.
“Willing to buy the old rascal? And he’s nothing but a tramp.”
“He’s a gentleman. You said so yourself on his collar,” said Ruth.
The man looked at her seriously and nodded. “I guess you think a whole lot of him, eh?”
“A great deal, sir,” admitted Ruth.
“Well! I guess I’ll have to tell you,” said the man, smiling. “Old Tom evidently thinks more of you girls than he does of me. Tell you what: After I got home the other day I thought it over. I reckon Tom Jonah’s chosen for himself. I paid my brother-in-law back the money he gave me for him. So you won’t be bothered again about him.”
“Oh, sir——”
“You keep him. Rather, let Tom Jonah stay as long as he wants to. But if he comes back to me I sha’n’t let him go again. No! I don’t want money for him. I guess the old dog likes it where he is, and his days of usefulness are pretty nearly over anyway. I’m convinced he’ll have a good home with you Corner House girls.”
“Just as long as he lives!” declared Ruth, fervently.
So Mr. Reynolds did not prove to be a hardhearted man, after all. Agnes and Tess and Dot were delighted. There was a regular celebration over Tom Jonah that evening after Ruth got home and told the news.
It is doubtful if Tom Jonah understood when Dot informed him that he was going to be their dog “for keeps.” But he barked very intelligently and the two smaller girls were quite convinced that he understood every word that was said to him.
“Of course, he can’t talk back,” Tess said. “Dogs don’t speak our language. But if we could understand the barking language, I am sure we would hear him say he was glad.”
And as our story of the Corner House girls’ visit to Pleasant Cove began with Tom Jonah, we may safely end it with the assurance that the good old dog will spend the rest of his life with Ruth and Agnes and Tess and Dot, at the old Corner House in Milton.
The End