Dot and Tess ran squealing to the shed to see the new members of the Corner House family, while Neale said, chuckling:
"It's a regular catastrophe, isn't it? Better fill the motor car with feline creatures and let Aggie and me chase around through the country, dropping cats at farmers' barns."
"Never!" proclaimed Agnes. "We mean to keep on good terms with all the farmers about Milton. We can't have them coming out and stopping us when we go by and demanding pay for all the hens you run over, Neale O'Neil."
"Never yet ran over but one hen," declared the boy quickly. "And she was an old cluck hen—the farmer said so. He thought he really ought to pay me for killing her. And she made soup at that."
"Come, come, come, children!" admonished Ruth. "Let us get out the books and see if we have quite forgotten everything we ever knew."
They gathered around the sitting-room lamp, Sammy Pinkney having appeared. Mrs. MacCall joined them with her mending, as she loved to do in the evenings. And the Corner House study hour was inaugurated for the fall with appropriate ceremonies of baked apples on the stove and a heaping plate of popcorn in the middle of the table.
"I can study so much better when I'm chewing something," Agnes admitted.
Dot was soon nodding and Mrs. MacCall from her low rocking chair observed:
"I think little folks had better go to bed with the chickens—eh, my lassie!"
"No, Mrs. Mac; I don't want to," complained the sleepy Dot. "I've got a bed of my own."