“Didn’t you have a chance to see me before I was born?”
“Goodness! No,” gasped Mrs. Pinkney.
“Then I guess you must have ‘bought a pig in a poke’ and that’s something Mrs. MacCall says is awful silly to do. You ought to have been more careful when you was picking out a boy to last.”
Of course, Christmas was a great day in and about the old Corner House. Although the older girls could not, as usual, visit their tenants in a poor part of the town and take them presents, Neale drove the little girls over there in the automobile and Mrs. Kranz, the “delicatessen lady,” and the girls’ very good friend, undertook to distribute the gifts to the needy.
Uncle Rufus’s daughter, Petunia Blossom, and her large family, came in for a generous share of the good will that spilled out of the Corner House.
Neale O’Neil’s good friend, Mr. Con Murphy, the cobbler, with whom the boy still lived, was not forgotten, and included in his list of presents was a fine green ribbon which Neale soberly produced and proceeded to tie around the fat neck of the perennial pig that occupied a clean sty in Mr. Murphy’s back yard. For the old cobbler was always very fond of “the gintleman that pays the rint,” which was his name for the pig.
Agnes tried to be as merry as her condition would allow. And on Christmas afternoon her school friends came in, and they had a little party.
“Aggie is managing to inject considerable pep into these proceedings, in spite of her lack of strength,” Neale remarked to Ruth.
The news that the Corner House girls were going South for two months or so, was now general knowledge; so the young folks when they departed bade the Kenways good-by. It was positive that Agnes’ face grew longer and longer during this proceeding, and when they had all gone she suddenly looked at Neale, gulped, grabbed him by both shoulders and shook him a bit, sobbing:
“You horrid boy! How can you be so cheerful, Neale O’Neil, when I’m go-going so—so far away?”