But Neale, considering it safer to say nothing more, merely repeated his warning.
The children drove out every pleasant afternoon when school was over, and within the fortnight Sammy and Tess and Dot were going about Milton with the pony through the shady and quiet streets, as though they had always done so. Therefore the older Corner House girls and Neale could take their friends to drive in the motor-car, without crowding in the two smaller children.
The "newness" of the automobile having worn off for Tess and Dot, they much preferred the basket carriage and the fat pony. They, too, could take their little friends driving, and this added a feeling of importance to their pleasure in the pony.
Had Tess had her way every sick or crippled child in town would have ridden behind the calico pony. She wanted at once to go to the Women's and Children's Hospital, where their very dear friend, Mrs. Eland, had been matron and for the benefit of which The Carnation Countess had been given by the school children of Milton, and take every unfortunate child, one after another, out in the basket carriage.
Their schoolmates especially had to be invited to ride, and Sadie Goronofsky from Meadow Street, and Alfredia Blossom, Uncle Rufus' granddaughter, were not neglected.
"I do declare!" said Aunt Sarah, with some exasperation, as she saw the pony and cart, with its nondescript crew, start off one afternoon for a jog around the Parade Ground. "I do declare! What riffraff Tess manages to pick up. For she certainly must be the biggest influence in gathering every rag, tag and bobtail child in the neighborhood. I never did see such a youngster."
"It isn't that Tessie's tastes are so heterodox," Ruth said, smiling quietly, "but her love for others is so broad."
"Humph!" snapped Aunt Sarah. "It's a wonder to me the child hasn't brought smallpox into the family from going as she does to those awful tenements on Meadow Street."
Aunt Sarah had always been snobbish in her tendencies, even in her days of poverty; and since she enjoyed the comforts and luxuries of the old Corner House it must be confessed that this unpleasant trait in the old woman's character had been considerably developed.
"The only tenements she goes to on Meadow Street are our own," Ruth replied with vigor. "If they are conducted so badly that diseases become epidemic there, we shall be to blame—shall we not?"