“He looks just like a person ready to go in swimming,” chuckled Agnes. “It’s a red bathing suit.”
“That’s one thing Agamemnon can’t stand. He don’t like water,” said Mrs. Bobster. “But if I let him out at low tide he’ll beau a flock of hens right down to the clamflats. But now, poor thing! they won’t go with him.”
“Who—the hens!” asked Ruth, wonderingly.
“Yes. They don’t think he looks jest right, I s’pose. If he chassés up to one of my old biddies, she tries to tear that flannel suit right off’n him. It’s hard on poor Agamemnon; but until his feathers start to grow good again, I don’t dare have him go without it. He’d git sunburned like a brick, in the fust place.”
This tickled Agnes so that she almost fell off the bench.
“But I should think the red flannel would tickle him awfully,” murmured Tess, quite seriously disturbed over the plight of the rooster.
“Sho! keeps away rheumatics. So poor Eddie allus said,” declared the widow. “That’s why he wore red flannel for forty year—and he never had a mite of rheumatism. Agamemnon ought to be satisfied he’s alive, after all he’s been through.”
It was really very funny to see the rooster strutting about the yard in what Agnes called his red bathing suit.
The Corner House girls remained for some time with Mrs. Bobster. When they went back to the camp at the bend they carried their first supply of bread and cookies.
They arrived at their tent to find a wagonette Pearl had hired in the port, and all the other girls who had been at the Spoondrift bungalow had come visiting.