The Corner House Girls at School Part 21

"There's that Neale O'Neil," said Carrie Poole, to some friends, on this particular afternoon, when she saw the boy putting on his skates. "Don't any of you girls know him? I want him at my party."

"He's dreadfully offish," complained Pearl Harrod.

"He seems to be friendly enough with the Corner House girls," said Carrie. "If they weren't such stuck-up things----"

"Who says they're stuck up?" demanded her cousin Lucy. "I'm sure Aggie isn't."

"Trix says she is. And I must say Ruth keeps to herself a whole lot.

She's in my cla.s.s but I scarcely ever speak to her," said Carrie.

"Now you've said something," laughed Eva Larry. "Ruth isn't a girl who puts herself forward, believe me!"

"They're all four jolly girls," declared Lucy.

"The kids and all."

"Oh! I don't want any kids out to the house Friday night," said Carrie.

"Do you mean to say you haven't asked Aggie and Ruth?" gasped Pearl.

"Not yet."

"Why not?" demanded Lucy, bluntly.

"Why----I don't know them very well," said Carrie, hastily. "But I _do_ want that Neale O'Neil. So few boys know how to act at a party. And I wager _he_ dances."

"I can tell you right now," said Lucy, "you'll never get him to come unless the Corner House girls are invited. Why! they're the only girls of us all who know him right well."

"I am going to try him," said Carrie Poole, with sudden decision.

She skated right over to Neale O'Neil just as he had finished strapping on the cobbler's old skates that had been lent him. Carrie Poole was a big girl--nearly seventeen. She was too wise to attack Neale directly with the request she had to make.

"Mr. O'Neil," she said, with a winning smile, "I saw you doing the 'double-roll' the other day, and you did it so easily! I've been trying to get it for a long while. Will you show me--please--just a little?"

Even the gruffest boy could scarcely escape from such a net--and Neale O'Neil was never impolite. He agreed to show her, and did so. Of course they became more or less friendly within a few minutes.

"It's so kind of you," said Carrie, when she had managed to get the figure very nicely. "I'm a thousand times obliged. But it wasn't just this that I wanted to talk with you about."

Neale looked amazed. He was not used to the feminine mind.

"I wanted to pluck up my courage," laughed Carrie, "to ask you to come to my party Friday evening. Just a lot of the boys and girls, all of whom you know, I am sure. I'd dearly love to have you come, Mr. O'Neil."

"But--but I don't really know _your_ name," stammered Neale.

"Why! I'm Carrie Poole."

"And I'm sure I don't know where you live," Neale hastened to say. "It's very kind of you----"

"Then you'll come?" cried Carrie, confidently. "We live out of town--on the Buckshot Road. Anybody will tell you."

"I suppose the Kenway girls will know," said Neale, doubtfully. "I can go along with them."

Carrie was a girl who thought quickly. She had really promised Trix Severn that she would not invite Ruth and Agnes Kenway to her party; but how could she get out of doing just that under these circ.u.mstances?

"Of course," she cried, with apparently perfect frankness. "I sincerely hope they'll both come. And I can depend upon you to be there, Mr.

O'Neil?"

Then she skated straight away and found Ruth and Agnes and invited them for Friday night in a most graceful way.

"I wanted to ask you girls personally instead of sending a formal invite," she said, warmly. "You being new girls, you know. You'll come?

That's so kind of you! I shouldn't feel that the party would be a success if you Corner House girls were not there."

So that is how they got the invitation; but at the time the Kenway sisters did not suspect how near they came to not being invited at all to the Christmas party.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BARN DANCE

Such a "hurly-burly" as there was about the old Corner House on Friday afternoon! Everybody save Aunt Sarah was on the _qui vive_ over the Christmas party--for this was the first important social occasion to which any of the Kenway sisters had been invited since coming to Milton to live.

Miss t.i.tus, that famous gossip and seamstress, had been called in again, and the girls all had plenty of up-to-date winter frocks made. Miss t.i.tus' breezy conversation vastly interested Dot, who often sat silently nursing her Alice-doll in the sewing room, ogling the seamstress wonderingly as her tongue ran on. "'N so, you see, he says to her," was a favorite phrase with Miss t.i.tus.

Mrs. MacCall said the seamstress' tongue was "hung in the middle and ran at both ends." But Dot's comment was even more to the point. After Miss t.i.tus had started home after a particularly gossipy day at the old Corner House, Dot said:

"Ruthie, don't you think Miss t.i.tus seems to know an awful lot of _un-so news_?"

However, to come to the important Friday of Carrie Poole's party: Ruth and Agnes were finally dressed. They only _looked_ at their supper. Who wanted to eat just before going to a real, country barn-dance? That is what Carrie had promised her school friends.

Ruth and Agnes had their coats and furs on half an hour before Neale O'Neil came for them. It was not until then that the girls noticed how really shabby Neale was. His overcoat was thin, and plainly had not been made for him.

Ruth knew she could not give the proud boy anything of value. He was making his own way and had refused every offer of a.s.sistance they had made him. He bore his poverty jauntily and held his head so high, and looked at the world so fearlessly, that it would have taken courage indeed to have accused him of being in need.

He strutted along beside the girls, his unmittened hands deep in his pockets. His very cheerfulness denied the cold, and when Ruth timidly said something about it, Neale said gruffly that "mittens were for babies!"

It was a lowery evening as the trio of young folk set forth. The clouds had threatened snow all day, and occasionally a flake--spying out the land ahead of its vast army of brothers--drifted through the air and kissed one's cheek.

Ruth, Agnes, and Neale talked of the possible storm, and the coming Christmas season, and of school, as they hurried along. It was a long walk out the Buckshot Road until they came in sight of the brilliantly lighted Poole farmhouse.

It stood at the top of the hill--a famous coasting place--and it looked almost like a castle, with all its windows alight, and now and then a flutter of snowflakes falling between the approaching young people and the lampshine from the doors and windows.

The girls and boys were coming from all directions--some from across the open, frozen fields, some from crossroads, and other groups, like the Corner House girls and Neale O'Neil, along the main highway.

Some few came in hacks, or private carriages; but not many. Milton people were, for the most part, plain folk, and frowned upon any ostentation.