CHAPTER I
ALL UP IN THE AIR
It all began because Tess Kenway became suddenly and deeply interestedin aeroplanes, airships and "all sort of flying things," as Dot, thesmallest Corner House girl, declared.
Perhaps one should modify that "suddenly"; for Tess had begun to thinkabout flying--as a profession--as long ago as the winter before (andthat was really a long time for a little girl of her age) when she hadacted as Swiftwing the Hummingbird in the children's play of _TheCarnation Countess_.
At any rate she said to Sammy Pinkney, who was almost their next doorneighbor, only he lived "scatecornered" across Willow Street, that shewished she had an airship.
And there! "Scatecornered" must be explained too; it was an expressionof Uncle Rufus' who was the Corner House girls' chief factotum andalmost an heirloom in the family, for he had long served Uncle PeterStower, who in dying had willed the beautiful old homestead in Miltonto his four grand-nieces.
"Just what does 'scatecornered' mean, Uncle Rufus?" asked Dot, whodelighted in polysyllables.
"Why, chile, 'scatecornered' am a pufficly good word, fo' I has used itall ma life. It's--er--well, it's sort of a short-cut for de meanin' ofslantindicular an crisscrosswise; w'ich means dat it ain't straight an'ain't crooked, but sort o'--er--scatecornered. Dere, chile, now youknows."
"Yes, Uncle Rufus; thank you," said Dot, polite if she did feel ratherdizzy after his explanation.
But it was with Tess, who was nearly two years older than Dot andthought herself vastly more grown up, and with Sammy Pinkney this storywas begun, and one should stick to one's text.
"Yes," murmured Tess, "I wish I had an airship."
Sammy looked at her, rather awed. Lately he was beginning to feel a miteawed in Tess Kenway's company, anyway. She had always been a thoughtfulchild. Aunt Sarah Maltby declared she was uncanny and gave her thefidgets. Of late even the boy who desired to be a pirate found Tesspuzzling.
"Huh! An airship? What would you do with it? Where would you keep it?"he finally demanded, his queries being nothing if not practical.
Really Tess had not addressed him directly. She had just audiblyexpressed a thought, and one that had long been in her mind in embryo.So she did not answer the neighbor boy, who was sitting beside her onthe side stoop of the Corner House, rigging a self-whittled ship to sailin the horse-trough.
"You know very well it wouldn't go in the garage; and the toolshed andthe henhouse--even Tom Jonah's house--are all too small. Huh! that'slike a girl! Never look ahead to see what they'd do with an airship ifsomebody gave 'em one."
"Well, I don't s'pose anybody will," admitted Tess, with a sigh, havingheard at least the last part of Sammy's speech.
"Anybody will _what_?" demanded Sammy, beginning to be somewhatconfused, partly from not knowing what he himself had been saying.
"Give us an airship."
"I should say not!" ejaculated Sammy. "Why, Tess Kenway, an airshipwould cost 'most a million dollars!"
"Is that so?" she said, accepting Sammy's slight overestimate of theprice of a flying machine quite placidly.
"And folks don't give away such presents. I should say not!" with scorn.
"Why, Neale O'Neil's Uncle Bill Sorber wants to give Dot and me a calicopony, and that must be worth a lot of money."
"Huh! What's a calico pony? Like one of these Teddy bears?" sniffedSammy. "Stuffed with cotton?"
"No it isn't, Mr. Saucebox!" broke in Agnes Kenway, the second andprettiest of the Corner House girls, who had just come out on the porchto brush her sport coat and had overheard the boy's observation. "Thatcalico pony is well stuffed with good oats and hay if it belongs toTwomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie. Neale's Uncle Billfeeds his horses till they are as fat as butter."
"Oh!" murmured Sammy. "A _real_ pony?" and his eyes began to shine. Hehad owned a goat (it was now Tess' property) and he now possessed abulldog. But he foresaw "larks" if the two smaller Corner House girlsgot a pony. The older ones often went out in the motor-car without Tessand Dot, and the suggestion of the pony may have been a roundabout wayof appeasing the youngsters.
"But say!" the boy added, "why did you call it calico? That's what theymake kids' dresses out of, isn't it?"
"Mine's gingham and I'm not a kid," declared Tess both promptly and withwarmth.
"Aw, well, I didn't mean _you_," explained Sammy. "And why do they calla pony 'calico'?"
This was too much for Tess and she put it up to Agnes.
"Why--now," began the older sister, "you--you know what a calico cat is,Sammy Pinkney?"
"Ye-es," Sammy said it rather doubtfully, however. "That's like MissPettingill's got down the street, ain't it?"
"O-o!" cried Tess. "That's _all_ colors, that old cat is!"
"It's sort of mottled and patchy. That's it--patchy!" declared Agnes,seizing the suggestion of "calico" and "patchwork" to make out her case.
"But," complained Tess, "I didn't think the pony would be as many colorsas Miss Pettingill's cat. You know she calls _him_ Rainbow."
"Why, the pony is only brown and white--or cream color," Agnes said withmore confidence. "And maybe a little pink."
"Ho! ho!" snorted Sammy. "Now you are stringin' us. Who ever heard of apink horse?"
Agnes went in without hearing this remark, and perhaps it was as wellfor Sammy Pinkney. Tess said severely:
"Our Agnes does not string people, Sammy. If she says the pony is pink,it is pink, you may be certain sure."
"And chocolate and cream color, too?" sniffed the boy. "Hum! I guess apony as funny as that would be, could fly too. So you'll be fixed up allright, Tess Kenway."
"Dear me," sighed the little girl, coming back to their original topicof conversation. "I wish we _did_ have something that would fly."
Now, secretly, Sammy was very fond of Tess. When he had had the scarletfever that spring and early summer, his little neighbor with the seriousface and dreamy look had been the most attentive friend one could everexpect to have.
She had called morning and night at his house to get the "bulletin" ofhis condition; and when he was up again and the house was what DotKenway had mentioned as "fumigrated," Tess had spent long hours amusingthe boy until he could play out of doors again.
Besides, she had much to do with his accompanying the Corner House girlson their recent motoring trip, and Sammy's own mother said that thatvacation journey had "made a new boy of Sammy."
This new boy, therefore, did not scorn to put his mind to the problem ofTess Kenway's distress. But an airship!
"I say, Tess," he said at last with some eagerness, "how'd one of themairmajigs be that father brought me home from the city once--only abigger one?"
"What is an airmajig?" demanded Tess, her curiosity aroused if nothingmore.
"Well, it's a dinky thing--pshaw! you remember. You stretched a wire,and then wound it up--"
"Wound up the wire?"
"Naw! Oh, jingo! The ship, I mean. It was run by a clock. And you hungit on the wire when it was wound."
"The clock?" asked Tess, still absent-mindedly.
"Oh! Je-ru-sa-_lem_! Girls don't know nothin' about mechanics," snarledSammy. "What's the use!"
Tess asked in an apologetic voice, after a moment of silence:
"What happened, Sammy?"
"What happened to _what_?"
"The airmajig?"
"Why, it traveled right along the wire--hanging to it, you know,"explained the little boy with more enthusiasm. "It would go as far asthe wire was long. Why, I bet, Tess Kenway, that it would run from yourhouse to mine. And it wiggled its wings just like a bird. And there wasa tin man in it. But pshaw! that was just for kids. It was a toy. But abigger one--"
"Oh, Sammy! big enough to carry us?" gasped Tess, clasping her hands.
"Er--well--now," hesitated Sammy, whose own imagination was hampered bya very practical streak in his character. "That would be some airship,wouldn't it? To carry us. It would have to be pretty big, and the wire'd
have to be awful strong."
"Oh, it wouldn't be flying, then," sighed Tess.
"But say!" he exclaimed more eagerly, "couldn't we fly your dolls init--yours and Dot's?"
"Oh!"
"That would be great!"
The screen door slammed behind them. "No," declared a serious and verydecisive voice. "You sha'n't fly my Alice-doll like a kite, SammyPinkney. So there!"
They turned to the dark, fairy-like little girl who had appeared freshfrom her afternoon toilet at the hands of Mrs. MacCall, the old Scotchhousekeeper who loved the Corner House girls as though they were herown.
Dot, as usual, clung tightly to the pink-faced, fair-haired doll whichof all her "children" was her favorite. The Alice-doll had been throughso many adventures, and suffered such peril and disaster, that Dot couldscarcely bear that she should be out of her sight for fear some newcalamity would happen to her.
Therefore Dot said quite firmly:
"No, Sammy Pinkney. You're not going to fly my Alice-doll. And I shouldthink you'd be 'shamed, Tessie Kenway, to let him even talk about it."
"Aw, who's goin' to hurt your old doll?" growled Sammy.
"She's _not_ an old doll, I'd have you know, Sammy Pinkney!" respondedDot, ready to argue the point with anybody. "She's just been made over.Didn't Neale O'Neil have her taken to the hospital? And didn't they makeover her face just like society ladies get _theirs_ done by ader--der-ma-olywog?"
"Mercy, child!" gasped Tess. "'Dermatologist' the word is. Ruth toldus."
"And they bleached her hair," concluded the excited Dot. "So there! Lotsof ladies have their hair bleached. It's quite fashioningble."
"Dot! Dot!" begged the purist, Tess, "do get your words right if youwill use such long ones."
Dot haughtily overlooked any such interruptions. "So," said she, "yousha'n't make a kite out of my Alice-doll," and she hugged the child toher bosom with emphasis.
"It isn't a kite," explained Tess, indulgently. "Sammy was talking aboutairships. He had one that had a clock in it and it flew on a wire--"
"Oo-ee!" squealed Dot suddenly. "I 'member about that, Sammy Pinkney.And your mother said you shouldn't _ever_ have such a contraption in thehouse again. It busted the parlor lamp."
"Oh, dear! I wish you'd say 'bursted,'" sighed her sister.
"But if it had been out of doors," Sammy grumbled, "where there weren'tany lamps and things, it would have worked fine. I tell you, Tess, wecould string it from your house to mine, and the carrier could be loadedup at one station and unloaded and loaded again at the other. Crickey,it would be fun!"
"But maybe Ruthie wouldn't let us do it," suggested Tess, beginning tobe enamored of the boy's idea, yet having her doubts about thefeasibility of the plan. "It would knock people's hats off."
"What would!" gasped Sammy.
"The wire--or the airship traveling back and forth."
"Oh, Je-ru-sa-_lem_,'" again exploded Sammy. "You wanted an airship,didn't you? 'Way up in the air--not so's you can reach it from theground. Why, we'll string the wire from my bedroom window to one of thewindows of the room you and Dot sleep in."
"Oh!" cried Dot, beginning to visualize the scheme now. "Just like thecash-carriers in the Five and Ten Cent Store."
"But Ruthie wouldn't let us, I'm afraid," murmured Tess, still doubtful.
"Let's ask her," said Sammy.
"Oh, let's!" cried Dot.
But when they hunted for Ruth, the eldest of the four Corner Housegirls, she was not to be found on the premises; and if the children hadbut known it just at that time Ruth Kenway was having an adventure ofher own which was, later, to prove of immense interest to all the CornerHouse family.