The Corner House Girls on Palm Island Part 15

"Yes. That is what she asks-and very prettily. That all of us, not forgetting Tess and Dot, will come to her suite at five, with Luke and Neale."

"Well, of all things!" gasped Agnes.

"Won't you go?" Neale asked, just a little worried now. He had carried the joke pretty far, he thought.

"I have half a mind to refuse," declared Agnes. "What shall I wear, Ruth?"

Neale was relieved by this question. He smiled engagingly.

"You don't need to worry about what you wear, Aggie. She's an awfully good kind. And she's been wanting to know you all along. But-she couldn't talk."

"I don't believe you," said Agnes flatly.

"Neale says she had a vow," remarked Tess soberly. "And she did speak sort of funny to me and Dot. But she's nice."

"She has nice candy," observed the littlest Corner House girl. "She gave us some when we were rehearsing for the concert."

"Of course you will go-and be a good girl," said Ruth, when she and Agnes were alone.

"Well, I suppose I must," sighed Agnes. "But I tell you what it is, Ruthie, I don't like Neale O'Neil having secrets from me. And I don't want him to be too friendly with other girls-not even when they are from the Back Bay and their names are in the society columns."

CHAPTER XI

A SEA ADVENTURE

That afternoon tea-party in Miss Hastings' suite was one of the nicest things that had ever happened to Agnes Kenway. She had dreamed of being entertained by a person like the Back Bay girl, served tea and cakes from a tea-wagon and by a French maid in beruffled cap and an ap.r.o.n not much bigger than a special delivery postage stamp!

Neale said that Agnes began to purr like a satisfied kitten almost as soon as she had shaken hands with the Back Bay girl. Once convinced that she had not been intentionally slighted on the boat (for Miss Hastings could tell of her dental predicament now with honest laughter), the beauty sister proved herself to be one of the most attractive girls in the world.

"I've wanted to know you, Miss Agnes, and Miss Kenway, ever since you came aboard the _Horridole_," Nalbro Hastings said, in a winning way.

"And I must thank you girls first of all for lending me Mr. O'Neil, who is a very efficient aid in almost anything social, I fancy."

"Easy on the Mister O'Neil stuff," growled Neale. "I've got a first name, you know."

"We have trained him very well," said Ruth demurely, "save in language.

He uses the most atrocious slang."

"But he's a good worker," admitted Agnes, staring coolly at Neale. "We have brought him up to be useful."

"Good in the pinches," muttered the much maligned Neale, but grinning.

It was a jolly occasion in every particular. Agnes perhaps had her eyes opened regarding the manners of Back Bay society girls. Nalbro Hastings was just as friendly and demure a girl as the flyaway Kenway had ever met. The latter continued somewhat subdued, herself.

During the next few days the Kenways saw a good deal of Miss Hastings.

They searched out all the interesting parts of the old town together.

The settlement dated back to a time soon after the coming of Columbus to the West Indies. It was not so old as Na.s.sau; but there was an old fort at the harbor's mouth; a monastery, grim enough of appearance, that might be turned very easily into a fortress overlooking the town; and a nunnery of dazzling white outer walls, but glowing with color inside, where the girls almost wrecked their pocketbooks buying fancy work.

Luke had to attend Professor Keeps on his first jaunt into the interior of the island, and was gone a week. Meanwhile Mr. Howbridge had several conferences with a business friend whose grapefruit plantations dotted the island. It was to see this man and arrange for the investment of some of his loose capital in the States that the lawyer from Milton had made this trip to St. Sergius.

So Neale was left alone to "beau the girls around." He did his duty n.o.bly, nor were all the ventures he engineered too tame. There were only twenty miles of auto road on the island; and, although a few people had small cars, it was no paradise for motorists. But the trails over the hills and along the verge of the chalk cliffs were wonderful.

The natives had bred small donkeys, or burros, in the comfortable saddles of which the tourist could observe nature, at sea and ash.o.r.e, in an agreeable way. The Corner House girls, often with others, including Nalbro Hastings, and under Neale's protection, traveled miles by donkey-back over the trails of St. Sergius.

The trails were bordered by jungle, it was true; but that was because a cleared spot in the jungle would return to its primeval state in two years. But little plantations dotted the ways-a cabin, palms, a grapefruit orchard, and a tiny vegetable garden, all over-run with naked babies of all shades from deepest ebony to a saddle-color tan.

"I don't see how anybody can be so black as the black ones are," sighed Agnes. "And so shiny. Their skin shines, and their teeth shine, and their eyes shine. Even Uncle Rufus' Petunia, as black as she is, doesn't glisten like these darkies."

All the adventures the Corner House girls had were not on sh.o.r.e. There were both sail and power boats in the bay for hire. Neale felt himself able to handle a sailing craft, and they ventured out in one. But he obeyed Mr. Howbridge's injunction and did not go beyond the fort.

During this first week at the resort letters arrived from Milton and one of them was of particular interest to the girls and Neale O'Neil. It was from Mrs. Oscar Pendleton and was addressed to Ruth.

The troubled woman said in part:

"We have many things to be thankful for, and are especially indebted to you, Miss Ruth, and your sisters. Don't think us ungrateful. But it does seem too bad that Mr. Howbridge asked my husband to work for Peter Conroy, and without learning first how Peter felt about Mr. Pendleton's affairs. It seems he gave Mr. Pendleton a job just because he felt himself obliged to do so. He was under obligation, he said, to Mr.

Howbridge. He told Mr. Pendleton so.

"All the time he was watching him, and counting the money in the cash-drawer over and over, and not letting Mr. Pendleton wait on cash customers. It was very embarra.s.sing for Mr. Pendleton and sometimes forced him to explain to people who were quite strangers, his misfortune in having to work for Peter.

"And finally Peter miscounted the sacks of potatoes that were delivered to the store and came right out and accused Mr. Pendleton of carrying off a 180 pound bag of potatoes! He accepted his dismissal before Peter found the miscounted bag, and I told Mr. Pendleton he should not go back to work for the old curmudgeon. I hope you will say I was right, Miss Ruth, although it does seem that as long as these accusations hang over him we shall continue in straits."

The letter was somewhat rambling; but it gave the older girls the impression that Mrs. Pendleton was dreadfully worried. And if her husband was again out of work it was no wonder that she was anxious.

"I know that old fellow who keeps the store on Plane Street. He's just as ill-tempered as Billy b.u.mps," declared Neale O'Neil. "I guess Mr.

Howbridge did not know Peter Conroy, or he would not have sent Mr.

Pendleton to work there."

This proved to be the case, as the lawyer admitted when he returned to the hotel at the end of the week.

"I am sorry for Pendleton. I had a personal interview with him before we left home and he seemed patient and willing. I am waiting now to hear from my clerk whom I instructed by wireless to look up the personal character of Mr. Israel Stumpf."

"Oh!" murmured Ruth, in some trouble, "I only felt a suspicion of him. I do not really know anything about Mr. Kolbeck's stepson."

"No. Neither do I," said Mr. Howbridge dryly. "But I mean to."

"I know Mr. Pendleton has been ill used," declared Agnes, with her usual energy. "And Mrs. Pendleton is a dear."

"Carrie and Margy are real nice," said Tess, who overheard the discussion. "I guess their father must be, too."

"Anyway, he is the only man we ever saw that fell out of a tree," Dot observed. "He's real int'resting, I think."

Ruth and Agnes were very much worried, and talked the matter over together before retiring.

"I am sure I don't know what poor Mrs. Pendleton is going to do if the money stops coming in," said Ruth.

"It will certainly be a hardship for them," answered Agnes. "He hasn't been at his job long enough to have saved any money."