“Those queer-looking ones—like two tramps. I just saw them going around toward the side entrance. Dot and Tess are on the porch. I don’t want tramps to frighten them or Linda. I’d better go down and see who they are. I don’t like their looks.”
“But we haven’t settled about the paper for Nally’s room!” called Agnes.
“You settle it with Mrs. Mac,” returned Ruth. “I must see about those two queer men.”
Dot and Tess had not long lived in their new home before they made the acquaintance of Sammy Pinkney, who dwelt catercornered from the Corner House, and Sammy, Dot and Tess had royal good times together.
Ruth and Agnes, being older—in fact, Ruth now being quite a young lady—had more mature friends. Among them might especially be mentioned Luke Shepard. His name was being coupled with Ruth’s in “quite a matrimonial manner,” Agnes laughingly remarked, at which Ruth retorted:
“You needn’t talk! What about Neale O’Neil?”
Whereat Agnes had the grace to blush.
Luke Shepard was a young collegian who was more or less at the Corner House—less when at college and more often during vacation times. Luke lived with his sister Cecile at Grantham, not many miles away. Their Aunt Lorena kept house for the young folks. They had a very good neighbor, and this neighbor had aided Luke in going to college. But now the young man was helping himself, having become an assistant during his vacations to a certain Professor Keeps. Often Luke came to Milton, staying with Neale O’Neil when he did so.
As for Neale, there was a romantic history connected with him. After running away from the circus he had lived with the Milton cobbler, and there was a mystery about his father who had gone to Alaska in search of gold. There were dark days for Neale until his father came back, not fabulously rich, but in much better circumstances than when he went away.
However, the wanderlust called Mr. O’Neil, and he went away again, first, however, providing well for his son. Had he wished, Neale might have had a house of his own, but he continued to live with old but loving Con Murphy, and he continued, too, to look after many details for the Kenway girls around their place. That this gave him a chance to see Agnes more often, may have had something to do with it.