“You won’t mind it,” chuckled Dr. Forsyth. “You know you won’t.”
“But how about Hedden? I believe he will give me notice.”
However, the idea went with the lawyer, and stayed with him. The holidays were approaching. Although the two older Corner House girls got out of their beds and were supposed to be convalescent, they were weak. They just lay around the house and were willing to be waited upon. But Ruth did not forget the Pendletons and was glad that Mr. Howbridge found work for the man who had been injured.
Neale played games or read aloud with Agnes by the hour. Sandyface, the old cat, came dragging in her newest litter of kittens—all four of them—and bedded them down in Ruth’s sewing basket at that invalid’s feet.
“Aye,” declared Mrs. MacCall one day, standing to look from one sister to the other, “it’s somebody must always pay the fiddler. This time you two lassies be payin’ tae the full!”
CHAPTER VI—SAMMY PINKNEY’S DEVOTION
Of course Tess and Dot Kenway had gone back to school after a few days. But while they were housed up Sammy Pinkney learned something. He scoffed at girls as playfellows quite openly when he was in the company of the smaller Corner House girls, but in secret he missed their companionship sorely.
Living as he did, just catercornered across Willow Street from the side door of the old Corner House, Sammy had been the most familiar playfellow of Tess and Dot since they had come to Milton. Sammy’s affairs had always entertained the Corner House family—even his attempts to run away to be a pirate.
Whatever Tess and Dot did, Sammy had a share in. During the brief time when they were kept indoors because Ruth and Agnes were so ill, Sammy concluded that he ought to do something big for the little girls on the coming holiday.
“I got to give something nice to Tess and Dot,” he told his mother and father. “They have done a lot of things for me, haven’t they?”