you aren't big enough even now to brag about."
The youngest Kenway might have been deeply offended by this – and shown that she had taken offence, too – had something new not taken her attention at the very moment she and Tess were entering the side gate of the old Corner House premises.
The house was a three story and attic mansion which was set well back from Main Street, but the side of which was separated from Willow Street by only a narrow strip of sward. The kitchen was in the wing nearest this last-named street, and there was a big, half-enclosed side porch, to which the woodshed was attached, and beyond which was the long grape arbor.
The length of the old Corner House yard, running parallel with Willow Street, was much greater than its width. The garden, summer house, henhouses, and other outbuildings were at the back. The lawn in front was well shaded, and there were plenty of fruit trees around the house. Not many dwellings in Milton had as much yard-room as the Stower homestead.
"Oh my, Tess!" gasped Dot, with deep interest, staring at the porch stoop. "Who is that – and what's he doing?"
"Dear me!" returned Tess, hesitating at the gate. "That's Seneca Sprague – the man who wears a linen duster and straw hat all the year round, and 'most always goes barefooted. He – he isn't just right, they say, Dot."
"Just right about what?" asked Dot.
"Mercy me, Dot!" exclaimed Tess, exasperated.
"Well, what is he?" asked Dot, with vigor.
"Well – I guess," said Tess, "that he thinks he is a minister. And, I do declare, I believe he's preaching to Sandyface and her kittens! Listen, Dot!"
CHAPTER III
BILLY BUMPS' BANQUET
Almost the first thing that would have caught the attention of the visitor to the old Corner House at almost any time, was the number of pets that hovered about that kitchen porch. Ruth, with a sigh, sometimes admitted that she was afraid she supported a menagerie.
Just at this hour – it was approaching noon – Mrs. MacCall, or the girl who helped her in the kitchen, might be expected to appear at the door with a plate of scraps or vegetable peelings or a little spare milk or other delicacy to tempt the appetites of the dumb creatures that subsisted upon the kindness of the Corner House family.
The birds, of course, got their share. In the winter the old Corner House was the rendezvous of a chattering throng of snow-buntings and sparrows and starlings, for the children tied suet and meat-bones to the branches of the fruit trees, as well as scattered crumbs upon the snow-crust. In summer the feathered beggars took toll as they pleased of the cherries and small fruits in the garden.
In the garden, too, was the only martin house in town, set upon a tall pole. There every spring a battle royal went on between the coming martins and the impudent sparrows, as the latter horde always appropriated the martin house during the absence of its proper owners in the South. Each cherry tree had its robin's nest – sometimes two. Mr. Robin likes to be near the supply of his favorite fruit. The wrens built under the eaves of the porch, and above the windows, in sheltered places. All the pigeons in the neighborhood flew here to strut and coo, and help eat any grain that might be thrown out.
What one saw now, waiting at the porch steps, was principally a family of cats. There were no less than nine posing expectantly before the queer looking character known to Milton folks as Seneca Sprague.
First of all, Sandyface, the speckled tabby-cat, sat placidly washing her face on the lower step. Close at her back, on the ground – one was even playing with its mother's steadily waving tail – was Sandyface's latest family, the four kittens bearing the remarkable names of Starboard, Port, Hard-a-lee and Mainsheet.
Grouped farther away from the mother cat were the four well-grown young cats, Spotty, Almira, Popocatepetl and Bungle.
Much farther in the background, and in the attitude of sleep, with his head on his forepaws, but with a blinking eye that lost nothing of what went on at the porch (for Mrs. MacCall might appear at any moment with his own particular dish) lay a big Newfoundland dog, with a noble head, intelligent brown eyes, and a muzzle now graying with age. This was the Corner House girls' newest and most valued pet, Tom Jonah.
In addition, on the clothes-drying green, was Billy Bumps. This suggestively named individual was a sturdy, wise-looking goat, with a face and chin-whisker which Mrs. MacCall declared was "as long as the moral law," and whose proclivity to eat anything that could be masticated was well-known to the Kenway children.
This collection of dumb pets the tall, lank, barefooted man in the broken straw hat and linen duster, now faced with a serious mien as though he were a real preacher and addressed a human congregation.
Seneca Sprague was a harmless person, considered "not quite right," as Tess had said, by his fellow-townsmen. Whether his oddities arose from a distraught mind, or an indulgence in a love of publicity, it would be hard to say.
His sharp-featured face and long, luxurious iron-gray hair, which he sometimes wore knotted up like a woman's, marked him wherever he went. Even those who thought him the possessor of a mind diseased agreed that he was quite harmless.
He came and went as he pleased, often preaching on street corners a doctrine which included a belief in George Washington as a supernatural being; and he was patriotic to the core.
Sometimes bad boys made fun of him, and followed and pelted him in the street; but, of course, the Corner House girls, who were kind to everybody and everything, would not have thought of harrying the queer old man, or ridiculing him.
Occasionally Seneca Sprague wrote and had printed a tract in which he ramblingly expressed his religious and patriotic beliefs, and an edition of this tract he was now selling from house to house in Milton. Ruth had, of course, purchased one and as Tess and Dot came into the old Corner House yard, Mr. Sprague was just turning away from the door, and had caught sight of the expectant congregation of pets gathered below him.
"Lo, and behold! lo, and behold!" ejaculated Seneca Sprague, in a solemn and resonant voice. "What saith the Scriptures? Him that hath ears to hear, let him hear."
Every cat's ears were pricked forward expectantly and even Tom Jonah lifted his glossy ears – probably hearing Mrs. MacCall's step at the kitchen door. Billy Bumps lifted a ruminant head and blatted softly.
"Thus saith the prophet," went on Seneca Sprague, in his sing-song tone. "There is yet a little time in which man may repent. Then cometh the Crack o' Doom! Beware! beware! beware!"
Here Dot whispered to Tess: "How did Mr. Seneca Sprague come to know so much about prophets, and what's going to happen, and all that? And what is the Crack o' Doom?"
"Mercy, I don't know, child!" exclaimed Tess. "I'm sure I didn't crack it."
The queer old man was interrupted just here, too, by Ruth Kenway's reappearance upon the porch. Ruth was a very intelligent looking girl, if not exactly a pretty one. She was dark and her hair was black; she had warm, brown eyes and a sweet, steady smile that pleased most people.
"Oh, Mr. Sprague!" she said, attracting that queer individual's attention. He actually swept off his torn straw hat and bowed before her.
Ruth's voice was low and pleasant. Mrs. MacCall said she had an old head upon young shoulders. But there had been good reason for the oldest of the Corner House girls to show in her look and manner the effect of responsibility and burden of forethought beyond her years.
