The Corner House Girls at School | Page 6

thick bath-gown as she held it up before her. The remainder of the fruit he bestowed about his own person, dropping it through the neck of his shirt until the peaches quite swelled out its fullness all about his waist. His trousers were held in place by a stout strap, instead of by suspenders.
He came down from the tree as easily as he had climbed it--and with the peaches intact.
"They must have a fine gymnasium at the school where you go," said Agnes, admiringly.
"I never went to school," said the boy, and blushed again.
Agnes was very curious. She had already established herself on the porch step, wrapped the robe closely around her, shook her two plaits back over her shoulders, and now sunk her teeth into the first peach. With her other hand she beckoned the white-haired boy to sit down beside her.
"Come and eat them," she said. "Breakfast won't be ready for ever and ever so long yet."
The boy removed the peaches he had picked, and made a little pyramid of them on the step. Then he put on his jacket and cap before he accepted her invitation. Meanwhile Agnes was eating the peach and contemplating him gravely.
She had to admit, now that she more closely inspected them, that the white-haired boy's garments were extremely shabby. Jacket and trousers were too small for him, as she had previously observed. His shirt was faded, very clean, and the elbows were patched. His shoes were broken, but polished brightly.
When he bit into the first peach his eye brightened and he ate the fruit greedily. Agnes believed he must be very hungry, and for once the next-to-the-oldest Kenway girl showed some tact.
"Will you stay to breakfast with us?" she asked. "Mrs. MacCall always gets up at six o'clock. And Ruth will want to see you, too. Ruth's the oldest of us Kenways."
"Is this a boarding-house?" asked the boy, seriously.
"Oh, no!"
"It's big enough."
"I 'spect it is," said Agnes. "There are lots of rooms we never use."
"Could--could a feller get to stay here?" queried the white-haired boy.
"Oh! I don't know," gasped Agnes. "You--you'd have to ask Ruth. And Mr. Howbridge, perhaps."
"Who's he?" asked the boy, suspiciously.
"Our lawyer."
"Does he live here?"
"Oh, no. There isn't any man here but Uncle Rufus. He's a colored man who lived with Uncle Peter who used to own this house. Uncle Peter gave it to us Kenway girls when he died."
"Oh! then you own it?" asked the boy.
"Mr. Howbridge is the executor of the estate; but we four Kenway girls--and Aunt Sarah--have the income from it. And we came to live in this old Corner House almost as soon as Uncle Peter Stower died."
"Then you could take boarders if you wanted to?" demanded the white-haired boy, sticking to his proposition like a leech.
"Why--maybe--I'd ask Ruth----"
"I'd pay my way," said the boy, sharply, and flushing again. She could see that he was a very proud boy, in spite of his evident poverty.
"I've got some money saved. I'd earn more--after school. I'm going to school across the Parade Ground there--when it opens. I've already seen the superintendent of schools. He says I belong in the highest grammar grade."
"Why!" cried Agnes, "that's the grade I am going into."
"I'm older than you are," said the boy, with that quick, angry flush mounting into his cheeks. "I'm fifteen. But I never had a chance to go to school."
"That is too bad," said Agnes, sympathetically. She saw that he was eager to enter school and sympathized with him on that point, for she was eager herself.
"We'll have an awfully nice teacher," she told him. "Miss Shipman."
Just then Ruth appeared at the upper window and looked down upon them.
CHAPTER III
THE PIG IS IMPORTANT
"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!" ejaculated Ruth, her eyes opening wider.
As an "explainer," Agnes was deficient. But she tried to start the story all over again. "Hush!" commanded Ruth, suddenly. "Wait till I come down. We'll have everybody in the house awake, and it is too early."
She disappeared