Agnes went in without hearing this remark, and perhaps it was as well for Sammy Pinkney. Tess said severely:
"Our Agnes does not string people, Sammy. If she says the pony is pink, it is pink, you may be certain sure."
"And chocolate and cream color, too?" sniffed the boy. "Hum! I guess a pony as funny as that would be, could fly too. So you'll be fixed up all right, Tess Kenway."
"Dear me," sighed the little girl, coming back to their original topic of conversation. "I wish we did have something that would fly."
Now, secretly, Sammy was very fond of Tess. When he had had the scarlet fever that spring and early summer, his little neighbor with the serious face and dreamy look had been the most attentive friend one could ever expect to have.
She had called morning and night at his house to get the "bulletin" of his condition; and when he was up again and the house was what Dot Kenway had mentioned as "fumigrated," Tess had spent long hours amusing the boy until he could play out of doors again.
Besides, she had much to do with his accompanying the Corner House girls on their recent motoring trip, and Sammy's own mother said that that vacation journey had "made a new boy of Sammy."
This new boy, therefore, did not scorn to put his mind to the problem of Tess Kenway's distress. But an airship!
"I say, Tess," he said at last with some eagerness, "how'd one of them airmajigs be that father brought me home from the city once—only a bigger one?"
"What is an airmajig?" demanded Tess, her curiosity aroused if nothing more.