III – THE DANCE AT CARRIE POOLE’S
Tess and Dot Kenway had something of particular interest to hold their attention, too, the minute they awoke on this Sunday morning. Dot voiced the matter first when she asked:
“Do you suppose that dear Tom Jonah is here yet, Tess?”
“Oh, I hope so!” cried the older girl.
“Let’s run see,” suggested Dot, and nothing loth Tess slipped into her bathrobe and slippers, too, and the two girls pattered downstairs. Their baths, always overseen by Ruth, were neglected. They must see, they thought, if the good old dog was on the porch.
Nobody was astir downstairs; Mrs. MacCall had not yet left her room, and on Sunday mornings even Uncle Rufus allowed himself an extra hour in bed. There was the delicious smell of warm baked beans left over night in the range oven; the big, steaming pot would be set upon the table at breakfast, flanked with golden-brown muffins on one side and the sliced “loaf,” or brownbread, on the other.
Sandyface came yawning from her basket behind the stove when Tess and Dot entered the kitchen. She had four little black and white blind babies in that basket which she had found in a barrel in the woodshed only a few days before.
Mrs. MacCall said she did not know what was to be done with the four kittens. Sandyface’s original family was quite grown up, and if these four were allowed to live, too, that would make nine cats around the old Corner House.
“And the goodness knows!” exclaimed the housekeeper, “that’s a whole lot more than any family has a business to keep. We’re overrun with cats.”
Tess unlocked the door and she and Dot went out on the porch, Sandyface following. There was no sign of the big dog.
“Tom Jonah’s gone!” sighed Dot, quaveringly.
“I wouldn’t have thought it – when we treated him so nicely,” said Tess.
Sandyface sniffed suspiciously at the old mat on which the dog had lain. Then she looked all about before venturing off the porch.
The sunshine and quiet of a perfect Sunday morning lay all about the old Corner House. Robins sought their very souls for music to tell how happy they were, in the tops of the cherry trees. Catbirds had not yet lost their love songs of the spring; though occasionally one scolded harshly when a roaming cat came too near the hidden nest.
Wrens hopped about the path, and even upon the porch steps, secure in their knowledge that they were too quick for Sandyface to reach, and with unbounded faith in human beings. An oriole burst into melody, swinging in the great snowball bush near the Willow Street fence.
There was a moist, warm smell from the garden; the old rooster crowed raucously; Billy Bumps bleated a wistful “Good-morning” from his pen. Then came a scramble of padded feet, and Sandyface went up the nearest tree like a flash of lightning.
“Here is Tom Jonah!” cried Tess, with delight.
From around the corner of the woodshed appeared the big, shaggy dog. He cocked one ear and actually smiled when he saw the cat go up the tree. But he trotted right up on the porch to meet the delighted girls.
His brown eyes were deep pools where golden sparks played. The mud had been mostly shaken off his flanks and paws. He was rested, and he acted as though he were sure of his position here at the old Corner House.
“Good old fellow!” cried Tess, putting out a hand to pat him.
At once Tom Jonah put up his right paw to shake hands. He repeated the feat with Dot the next moment, to the delight of both girls.
“Oh!” gasped Dot, “he’s a trick dog.”
“He’s just what his collar says; he’s a gentleman,” sighed Tess, happily. “Oh! I hope his folks won’t ever come after him.”
Ruth had to come down for Tess and Dot or they would not have been bathed and dressed in time for breakfast. The smaller girls were very much taken with Tom Jonah.
They found that he had more accomplishments than “shaking hands.” When Agnes came down and heard about his first manifestation of education, she tried him at other “stunts.”
He sat up at the word of command. He would hold a bit of meat, or a sweet cracker, on his nose any length of time you might name, and never offer to eat it until you said, “Now, sir!” or something of the kind. Then Tom Jonah would jerk the tidbit into the air and catch it in his jaws as it came down.
And those jaws! Powerful indeed, despite some of the teeth having been broken and discolored by age. For Tom Jonah was no puppy. Uncle Rufus declared him to be at least twelve years old, and perhaps more than that.
But he had the physique of a lion – a great, broad chest, and muscles in his shoulders that slipped under the skin when he was in action like a tiger’s. Now that he was somewhat rested from the long journey he had evidently taken, he seemed a very powerful, healthy dog.
“And he would have eaten that tramp up, if he’d gotten hold of him,” Agnes declared, as they gathered at the breakfast table.
“Oh, no, Aggie; I don’t think Tom Jonah would really have bitten that Gypsy man,” Tess hastened to say. “But he might have grabbed his coat and held on.”
“With those jaws – I guess he would have held on,” sighed Agnes.
“Anyway,” said Dot, “he saved Ruthie’s hens. Didn’t he, Ruthie?”
“I’ll gladly pay his license fee if he wants to stay with us,” said Ruth, gaily.
The cornmeal muffins chanced to be a little over-baked that morning; at least, one panful was. Dot did not like “crusts”; she had been known to hide very hard ones under the edge of her plate.
She played with one of these muffin crusts more than she ate it, and Aunt Sarah Maltby (who was a very grim lady indeed with penetrating eyes and a habit of seldom speaking) had an accusing eye upon the little girl.
“Dorothy,” she said, suddenly, “you will see the time, I have no doubt, when you will be hungry for that crust. You had better eat it now like a nice girl.”
“Aunt Sarah, I really do not want it,” said Dot, gravely. “And – and if I don’t, do you think I shall really some day be hungry for just this pertic’lar crust?”
“You will. I expect nothing less,” snapped Aunt Sarah. “The Kenways was allus spend-thrifts. Why! when I was your age, Dorothy, I was glad to get dry bread to eat!”
Dot looked at her with serious interest. “You must have been awfully poor, Aunt Sarah,” she said, sympathetically. “You have a much better time living with us, don’t you?”
Ruth shook her head admonishingly at the smallest girl; but for once Aunt Sarah was rather nonplussed, and nobody heard her speak again before she went off to church.
Neale came over later, dressed for Sunday school, and he was as much interested in the new boarder at the Corner House as the girls themselves.
“If he belongs anywhere around Milton, somebody will surely know about him,” said the boy. “I’ll make inquiries. Wherever he comes from, he must be well known in that locality.”
“Why
