“‘The bull and the cow, Miss Andrews; and the cow gives the most milk.’”
Dot’s school held its closing exercises one morning, and Tess’ in the afternoon. Then came the graduation of Agnes and Neale O’Neil from the grammar school. Ruth was excused from her own classes at High long enough to attend her sister’s graduation.
Although the plump Corner House girl was no genius, she always stood well in her classes. Ruth saw to that, for what Agnes did not learn at school she had to study at home.
So she stood well up in her class, and she did look “too distractingly pretty,” as Mrs. MacCall declared, when she gave the last touches to Agnes’ dress before she started for school that last day. Miss Ann Titus, Milton’s most famous seamstress and “gossip-in-ordinary,” had outdone herself in making Agnes’ dress. No girl in her class—not even Trix Severn—was dressed so becomingly.
The envious Trix heard the commendations showered on her former friend, and her face grew sourer and her temper sharper. She well knew she had invited the Corner House girls to be her guests at Pleasant Cove; but she did not want them in her party now. She did not know how to get out of “the fix,” as she called it in her own mind.
She had intimated to two or three other girls who were going, however, that Agnes and Ruth had forced the invitation from her in a moment of weakness. If she had to number them of her party, Miss Trix proposed to make it just as unpleasant for the Kenway sisters as she could.
High school graduation was on Thursday. On Friday a special through train was put on by the railroad from Milton to Pleasant Cove. It was scheduled to leave the former station at ten o’clock.
Luckily Mrs. MacCall had insisted upon having all the trunks and bags packed the day before, for on this Friday morning the Corner House girls had little time for anything but saying “good-bye” to their many friends, both human and dumb.
“Whatever will Tom Jonah think?” cried Tess, hugging the big dog that had taken up his abode at the Corner House so strangely. “He’ll think we have run away from him, poor fellow!”
“Oh! don’t you think that, Tom Jonah!” begged Dot, seizing the dog on the other side. “We all love you so! And we’ll come back to you.”