Here Tess put in a soothing word, as usual: “Of course he didn’t mean to pull up all your beets, Mrs. McCall.”
“And I don’t like beets anyway,” proclaimed Dot.
“He certainly must have worked hard,” Ruth said, producing a fifty-cent piece and running down the steps to press it into Mr. Pinkney’s palm. “I am sure Sammy had no intention of spoiling our beet bed. And I am not sure that it is not partly our fault. He should not have been left all the afternoon without some supervision.”
“He should be more observing,” said Mr. Pinkney. “I never did see such a rattlebrain.”
“‘The servant is worthy of his hire,’” quoted Ruth. “And tell him, Mr. Pinkney, that we forgive him.”
“Just the same,” cried Agnes after their neighbor, “although Sammy may know beans, as Neale says, he doesn’t seem to know beets! Oh, what a boy!”
So Mr. Pinkney brought home the story of Sammy’s mistake and he and his wife laughed over it. But when Mrs. Pinkney called upstairs for the boy to come down to a late supper she got only a muffled response that he “didn’t want no supper.”
“He must be sick,” she observed to her husband, somewhat anxiously.
“He’s sick of the mess he’s made—that’s all,” declared Mr. Pinkney cheerfully. “Let him alone. He’ll come around all right in the morning.”
Meanwhile at the Corner House the Kenway sisters had something more important (at least, as they thought) to talk about than Sammy Pinkney and his errors of judgment. What Dot had begun to call the “fretful silver bracelet” was a very live topic.