NEALE IN DISGUISE
The Parade Ground was in the center of Milton. Its lower end bordered Willow Street, and the old Corner House was right across from the termination of the Parade's principal shaded walk.
Ranged all around the Parade (which had in colonial days been called "the training ground" where the local militia-hands drilled) were the principal public buildings of the town, although the chief business places were situated down Main Street, below the Corner House.
The brick courthouse with its tall, square tower, occupied a prominent situation on the Parade. The several more important church edifices, too, faced the great, open common. Interspersed were the better residences of Milton. Some of these were far more modern than the old Stower homestead, but to the Kenway girls none seemed more homelike in appearance.
At the upper end of the Parade were grouped the schools of the town. There was a handsome new high school that Ruth was going to enter; the old one was now given over to the manual training departments. The grammar and primary school was a large, sprawling building with plenty of entrances and exits, and in this structure the other three Kenway girls found their grades.
The quartette of Corner House girls were not the only young folk anxious about entering the Milton schools for the forthcoming year. There was Neale O'Neil. The Kenways knew by the way he spoke, that his expected experiences at school were uppermost in his thoughts all the time.
Ruth had talked the matter over with Mrs. MacCall, although she had not seen Mr. Howbridge, and they had decided that the boy was a very welcome addition to the Corner House household, if he would stay.
But Neale O'Neil did not want charity—nor would he accept anything that savored of it for long. Even while he was so busy helping the girls clean house, he had kept his eyes and ears open for a permanent lodging. And on Saturday morning he surprised Ruth by announcing that he would leave them after supper that night.
"Why, Neale! where are you going?" asked the oldest Corner House girl. "I am sure there is room enough for you here."
"I know all about that," said Neale, grinning quickly at her. "You folks are the best ever."
"Then, why——?"
"I've made a dicker with Mr. Con Murphy. You see, I won't be far from you girls if you want me any time," he pursued.
"You are going to live with Mr. Murphy?"
"Yes. He's got a spare room—and it's very neat and clean. There's a woman comes in and 'does' for him, as he calls it. He needs a chap like me to give him a hand now and then—taking care of the pig and his garden, you know."
"Not in the winter, Neale," said Ruth, gently. "I hope you are not leaving us for any foolish reason. You are perfectly welcome to stay. You ought to know that."
"That is fine of you, Ruth," he said, gratefully. "But you don't need me here. I can feel more independent over there at Murphy's. And I shall be quite all right there, I assure you."
The house was now all to rights—"spick and span," Mrs. MacCall said—and Saturday was given up to preparing for the coming school term. It was the last day of the long vacation.
Dot had no loose tooth to worry her and she was busy, with Tess, in preparing the dolls' winter nursery. All summer the little girls had played in the rustic house in the garden, but now that September had come, an out-of-door playroom would soon be too cold.
Although the great garret made a grand playroom for all hands on stormy days, Ruth thought it too far for Dot and Tess to go to the top of the house alone to play with their dolls. For her dolls were of as much importance to Dot as her own eating or sleeping. She lived in a little world of her own with the Alice-doll and all her other "children"; and she no more thought of neglecting them for a day than she and Tess neglected Billy Bumps or the cats.
There was no means of heating the garret, so a room in the wing with their bed chambers, and which was heated from the cellar furnace, was given up to "the kiddies'" nursery.
There were many treasures to be taken indoors, and Dot and Tess toiled out of the garden, and up the porch steps, and through the hall, and climbed the stairs to the new playroom—oh! so many times.
Mr. Stetson, the groceryman, came with an order just as Dot was toiling along with an armful to the porch.
"Hello! hello!" he exclaimed. "Don't you want some help with all that load, Miss Dorothy?" She was a special favorite of his, and he always stopped to talk with her.
"Ruthie says we got to move all by ourselves—Tess and me," said Dot, with a sigh. "I'm just as much obliged to you, but I guess you can't help."
She had sat down on the porch steps and Sandyface came, purring, to rub against her.
"You can go right away, Sandy!" said Dot, sternly. "I don't like you—much. You went and sat right down in the middle of my Alice-doll's old cradle, and on her best knit coverlet, and went to sleep—and you're moulting! I'll never get the hairs off of that quilt."
"Moulting, eh!" chuckled Mr. Stetson. "Don't you mean shedding?"
"We—ell, maybe," confessed Dot. "But the hens' feathers are coming out and they're moulting—I heard Ruth say so. So why not cats? Anyway, you can go away, Sandyface, and stop rubbing them off on me."
"What's become of that kitten of yours—Bungle, did you call it?" asked the groceryman.
"Why, don't you know?" asked Dot, in evident surprise.
"I haven't heard a word," confessed Mr. Stetson. "Did something happen to it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Was it poisoned?"
"Oh, no!"
"Drowned?"
"No, sir."
"Did somebody steal it?" queried Mr. Stetson.
"No, indeed!"
"Was it hurt in any way?"
"No, sir."
"Well, then," said the groceryman, "I can't guess. What did happen to Bungle?"
"Why," said Dot, "he growed into a cat!"
That amused Mr. Stetson immensely, and he went away, laughing. "It seems to me," Dot said, seriously, to Tess, "that it don't take so much to make grown-up people laugh. Is it funny for a kitten to grow into a cat?"
Neale disappeared for some time right after dinner. He had done all he could to help Uncle Rufus and Mrs. MacCall that forenoon, and had promised Ruth to come back for supper. "I wouldn't miss Mrs. MacCall's beans and fishcakes for a farm!" he declared, laughing.
But he did not laugh as much as he had when he first came to the old Corner House. Ruth, at least, noticed the change in him, and, "harking back," she began to realize that the change had begun just after Neale had been so startled by the advertisment he had read in the Morning Post.
The two older Kenway girls had errands to do at some of the Main Street stores that afternoon. It was Agnes who came across Neale O'Neil in the big pharmacy on the corner of Ralph Street. He was busily engaged with a clerk at the rear of the store.
"Hello, Neale!" cried Agnes. "What you buying?" Sometimes Agnes' curiosity went beyond her good manners.
"I'll take this kind," said Neale, hurriedly, touching a bottle at random, and then turned his back on the counter to greet Agnes. "An ounce of question-powders to make askits," he said to her, with a grave and serious air. "You don't need any, do you?"
"Funny!"
"But I don't look as funny as you do," chuckled Neale O'Neil. "That's the most preposterous looking hat I ever saw, Aggie. And those rabbit-ears on it!"
"Tow-head!" responded Agnes, with rather crude repartee.
Neale did not usually mind being tweaked about his flaxen hair—at least, not by the Corner House girls, but Agnes saw his expression change suddenly, and he turned back to the clerk and received his package without a word.
"Oh, you needn't get mad," she said, quickly.
"I'm not," responded Neale, briefly, but he paid for his purchase and hurried away without further remark. Agnes chanced to notice that the other bottles the clerk was returning to the shelves were all samples of dyes and "hair-restorers."
"Maybe he's buying something for Mr. Murphy. Mr. Murphy is awfully bald on top," thought Agnes, and that's all she did think about it until the next day.
The girls had invited Neale to go to their church, with them and he had promised to be there. But when they filed in just before the sermon they saw nothing of the white-haired boy standing about the porch with the other boys.
"There's somebody in our pew," whispered Tess to Ruth.
"Aunt Sarah?"
"No. Aunt Sarah is in her own seat across the aisle," said Agnes. "Why! it's a boy."
"It's Neale O'Neil," gasped Ruth. "But what has he done to his hair?"
A glossy brown head showed just above the tall back of the old-fashioned pew. The sun shining through the long windows on the side of the church shone upon Neale's thick thatch of hair with iridescent glory. Whenever he moved his head, the hue of the hair seemed to change—like a piece of changeable silk!
"That can't be him," said Agnes, with awe. "Where's all his lovely flaxen hair?"
"The foolish boy! He's dyed it," said Ruth, and then they reached the pew and could say no more.
Neale had taken the far corner of the pew, so the girls and Mrs. MacCall filed in without disturbing him. Agnes punched Neale with her elbow and scowled at him.
"What did you want to do that for?" she hissed.
"Do what for?" he responded, trying to look unconscious.
"You know. Fix your hair like that?"
"Because you called me 'tow-head,'" he whispered, grinning.
When Mrs. MacCall caught her first glimpse of him when they got up to sing, she started, stared, and almost expressed her opinion aloud.
"What under the canopy's the matter with that boy's head?" she whispered to Ruth when they were seated again.
And there was reason for asking! As the service proceeded and Neale's hair grew dryer, the sun shining upon his head revealed a wealth of iridescence that attracted more attention than the minister's sermon.
The glossy brown gave way before a greenish tinge that changed to purple at the roots. The dye would have been a success for an Easter egg, but as an application to the hair, it was not an unqualified delight—at least, not to the user.
The more youthful and thoughtless of the congregation—especially those behind the unconscious Neale—found amusement enough in the exhibition. The pastor discovered it harder than ever that morning to hold the attention of certain irreverent ones, and being a near-sighted man, he was at fault as to the reason for the bustle that increased as his sermon proceeded.
The Corner House girls—especially Ruth and Agnes—began to feel the matter acutely. Neale was quite unconscious of the result of the dye upon his hair. As the minutes passed and the rainbow effect became more and more visible, the disturbance became more pronounced.
Suddenly there sounded the important creaking of Deacon Abel's boots down the aisle. Agnes flashed a look over her shoulder. The stern old deacon was aiming straight for their pew!