Tess repeated her expression of gratitude.
"Humph!" ejaculated the red-haired teacher. "So you are still interested in Mrs. Eland, are you? Have you seen her again?"
"I am going to take tea with her this afternoon," said Tess, eagerly. "So is my sister, Dot."
"You don't know if she has found her sister yet?" asked Miss Pepperill, but more to herself than as though she expected a reply. "No! of course not."
Tess hurried to meet Dot after school. She found her sister at the girls' gate of the primary department, hugging the Alice-doll (of course, in a brand new cloak) and listening with wide-eyed interest to the small, impish, black-haired boy who was talking earnestly to her.
"And then I shall run away and sail the rollin' billers," he declared. "I hope they won't find old Pepperpot after I tie her to her chair—not—not from Friday afternoon till Monday mornin', when they open school again. That's what I hope. And by that time I can sail clean around the Cape of Good Hope to the Cannibal Islands, I guess."
"Oh-ee!" gasped Dot. "And suppose the cannibals eat you, Sammy Pinkney? What would your mother say?"
"She'd be sorry, I guess," said Sammy, darkly. "And so would my pop. But shucks!" he added quickly. "Pirates never get eat by cannibals. They're too smart."
"That's all you know about it, Sammy Pinkney!" said Tess, sternly, breaking in upon the boasting of the scapegrace, who dearly loved an audience. "We met a man this summer that knew all about pirates—or said he did; didn't we, Dot?"
"Oh, yes. The clam-man," the smallest Corner House girl agreed. "And he had a wooden leg."