“How do you know so much, Tess Kenway?” cried Mabel. “These are my lobsters and I’ll have them turn blue if I want to—so there!”
There seemed to be no room for further argument. Besides, Mabel grabbed Bubby by the hand and dragged him away from the hedge.
“My!” murmured Dot, “Mabel has such a ‘magination. And maybe that lobster did get mad, Tess. We don’t know.”
“She never had a live lobster in her family,” declared Tess, quite emphatically. “You know very well, Dot Kenway, that Mr. Creamer wouldn’t bring home such a thing as a live lobster, when there are little children in his house.”
“M—mm—I guess that’s so,” agreed Dot. “A live lobster would be worse than Sammy Pinkney’s bulldog.”
Thus reminded of the absent Sammy the two smaller Corner House girls postponed any further search for Uncle Rufus’s dollar and went across the street to learn if any news had been gained of their runaway playmate. Mrs. Pinkney was still despairing. She had imagined already a score of misfortunes that might have befallen her absent son, ranging from his eating of green apples to being run over by an automobile.
“But, Mrs. Pinkney!” burst forth Tess at last, “if Sammy has run away to sea to be a pirate, there won’t be any green apples for him to eat—and no automobiles.”
“Oh, you can never tell what trouble Sammy Pinkney will manage to get into,” moaned his mother. “I can only expect the very worst.”
“Well,” Dot remarked with a sigh, as she and Tess trudged home to supper, “I’m glad there is only one boy in my family. My boy doll, Nosmo King Kenway, will probably be a source of great anxiety when he is older.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Tess told her placidly. “If he is very bad you can send him to the reform school.”