The Corner House Girls at School Part 22

The Corner House girls and their escort reached the Poole homestead in good season. The entire lower floor was open to them, save the kitchen, where Mother Poole and the hired help were busy with the huge supper that was to be served later.

There was music and singing, and a patheoscope entertainment at first, while everybody was getting acquainted with everybody else. But the boys soon escaped to the barn.

The Poole barn was an enormous one. The open floor, with the great mows on either side, and the forest of rafters overhead, could have accommodated a full company of the state militia, for its drill and evolutions.

Under the mows on either hand were the broad stalls for the cattle--the horses' intelligent heads looking over the mangers at the brilliantly lighted scene, from one side, while the mild-eyed cows and oxen chewed their cud on the other side of the barn floor.

All the farm machinery and wagons had been removed, and the open s.p.a.ce thoroughly swept. Rows of Chinese lanterns, carefully stayed so that the candles should not set them afire, were strung from end to end of the barn. Overhead the beams of three great lanterns were reflected downward upon the dancing-floor.

When the boys first began to crowd out to the barn, all the decorating was not quite finished, and the workmen had left a rope hanging from a beam above. Some of the boys began swinging on that rope.

"Here's Neale! Here's Neale O'Neil!" cried one of the sixth grade boys when Neale appeared. "Come on, Neale. Show us what you did on the rope in the school gym."

Most boys can easily be tempted to "show off" a little when it comes to gymnastic exercises. Neale seized the rope and began to mount it, stiff-legged and "hand over hand." It was a feat that a professional acrobat would have found easy, but that very few but professionals could have accomplished.

It was when he reached the beam that the boy surprised his mates. He got his legs over the beam and rested for a moment; then he commenced the descent.

In some way he wrapped his legs around the rope and, head down, suddenly shot toward the floor at a fear-exciting pace.

Several of the girls, with Mr. Poole, were just entering the barn. The girls shrieked, for they thought Neale was falling.

But the boy halted in midflight, swung up his body quickly, seized the rope again with both hands, and dropped lightly to the floor.

"Bravo!" cried Mr. Poole, leading the applause. "I declare, that was well done. I saw a boy at Twomley & Sorber's Circus this last summer do that very thing--and he did it no better."

"Oh, but that couldn't have been Neale, Mr. Poole," Agnes Kenway hastened to say, "for Neale tells us that he never went to a circus in his life."

"He might easily be the junior member of an acrobatic troupe, just the same," said Mr. Poole; but Neale had slipped away from them for the time being and the farmer got no chance to interview the boy.

A large-sized talking machine was wheeled into place and the farmer put in the dance records himself. The simple dances--such as they had learned at school or in the juvenile dancing cla.s.ses--brought even the most bashful boys out upon the floor. There were no wallflowers, for Carrie was a good hostess and, after all, had picked her company with some judgment.

The girls began dancing with their furs and coats on; but soon they threw their wraps aside, for the barn floor seemed as warm as any ballroom.

They had lots of fun in the "grand march," and with a magic-lantern one of the boys flashed vari-colored lights upon the crowd from the loft-ladder at the end of the barn.

Suddenly Mr. Poole put a band record in the machine, and as the march struck up, the great doors facing the house were rolled back. They had been dancing for more than two hours. It was after ten o 'clock.

"Oh!" shouted the girls.

"Ah!" cried the boys.

The snow was now drifting steadily down, and between the illumination by the colored slides in the lantern, and that from the blazing windows of the big house, it was indeed a scene to suggest fairyland!

"Into the house--all of you!" shouted Mr. Poole. "Boys, a.s.sist your partners through the snow."

"Come on! Come on!" shouted Carrie, in the lead with Neale O'Neil.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"

"Charge for the _eats_, they said!" added Agnes. "Oh--ow--ouch! over my shoe in the snow."

"And it's we-e-e-et!" wailed another of the girls. "Right down my neck!"

"'Be-you-ti-ful snow! He may sing whom it suits-- I object to the stuff 'cause it soaks through my boots!'"

quoted Agnes. "Hurry up, you ahead!"

So the march was rather ragged--more in the nature of a raid, indeed.

But they had to halt at the side door where the two maids stood armed with brooms, for Mrs. Poole did not propose that the crowd should bring in several bushels of snow on their feet.

In the dining and sitting-rooms were long tables, and all loaded with good things. There were no seats, but plenty of standing room about the tables. Everybody helped everybody else, and there was a lot of fun.

Some of the girls began to be troubled by the storm. They made frequent trips to the windows to look out of doors. Soon wraps appeared and the girls began to say good-night to their young hostess.

"I don't see how we're ever going to get home!" cried one of the girls who lived at the greatest distance.

Farmer Poole had thought of that. He had routed out his men again, and they harnessed the horses to a big pung and to two smaller sleighs.

Into these vehicles piled both boys and girls who lived on the other side of Milton. A few private equipages arrived for some of the young folk. The fathers of some had tramped through the snow to the farmhouse to make sure that their daughters were properly escorted home in the fast quickening storm.

To look out of doors, it seemed a perfect wall of falling snow that the lamplight streamed out upon. Fortunately it was not very cold, nor did the wind blow. But at the corner of the house there was a drift as deep as Neale O'Neil's knees.

"But we'll pull through all right, girls, if you want to try it," he a.s.sured Ruth and Agnes.

They did not like to wait until the sledges got back; that might not be for an hour. And even then the vehicles would be overcrowded. "Come on!"

said Agnes. "Let's risk it, Ruth."

"I don't know but that we'd better----"

"Pshaw! Neale will get us through. He knows a shortcut--so he says."

"Of course we can trust Neale," said the older Corner House girl, smiling, and she made no further objection.

They had already bidden their hostess and her father and mother good-night. So when the trio set off toward town n.o.body saw them start.

They took the lane beside the barn and went right down the hill, between the stone fences, now more than half hidden by the snow.

When they got upon the flats, and the lights of the house were hidden, it did seem as though they were in a great, white desert.

"Who told you this was a short way to town?" demanded Agnes, of Neale.

"Why, one of the girls told me," Neale said, innocently enough. "You know--that Severn girl."

"What! Trix Severn?" shrieked Agnes.

"Yes."

"I believe she started you off this way, just for the sake of getting us all into trouble," cried Agnes. "Let's go back!"

But they were now some distance out upon the flats. Far, far ahead there were faint lights, denoting the situation of Milton; but behind them all the lights on the hill had been quenched. The Pooles had extinguished the lamps at the back of the house, and of course ere this the great barn itself was shrouded in darkness.