“Cricky!” exclaimed Neale, under his breath, and with some admiration, “the kid’s making out a case.”
Tess, the kind-hearted, would make no accusation; but Ruth, despite the boy’s rejoinders, remained firm.
“No,” she said. “He must go home. Is there a railroad station near from which we can send him, Neale? We’ll telephone to his mother. We are a long way from town.”
At that Sammy Pinkney, who prided himself on being “tough” and who was in training for a piratical future, broke down completely.
“Ow! ow! ow!” he howled, digging his grimy fist first into one eye and then into the other. “I don’t wanter! I don’t wanter! I don’t wanter go back. I ain’t got nobody to play with. And ma’ll lick me ’cause I said you’d ‘vited me to go—an’ now Aggie s-s-says she didn’t. And I been sick, anyway, and I can’t play with the fellers, ’cause it tires me so.
“I—I—I never git to go nowheres,” pursued Sammy, using the most atrocious English, but utterly abandoned in his grief. “You Corner House girls git all the go—go—good times, and I ain’t got even a s-s-sister to play with——”
At this point a most astonishing thing overtook Agnes Kenway. She had begun by glaring at Sammy in anger; but as he went on to bewail his hard state, her pretty face flushed, then paled; her blue eyes filled with tears which soon began to spill over. She drew nearer to the miserable little chap, standing, dirty and forlorn, in the middle of the road.
“Now, stop that, Sammy!” she suddenly blurted out. “Just stop. Don’t cry any more.”
“He can’t go. There isn’t room,” Ruth was repeating.
Agnes turned toward the eldest Corner House girl sharply and stamped her foot.