cat's dish, 'cause he landed on it."

"That's some tough baby," pronounced Neale; but after Mabel had wheeled Bubby away Tess confided to Neale that she knew why the Creamer's youngest was so "tough."

"Why, you know," Tess said earnestly, "almost everything that could happen to a baby has happened to him. Mabel hates to take care of him, and she is always forgetting and leaving him to tumble out of the carriage, or into something babies aren't supposed to get into."

"And 'member when he got carried away in the hamper by the laundryman?" broke in Dot. "If it hadn't been for our Agnes following in Joe Eldred's motor car, Bubby might have been washed and ironed and brought back to Mrs. Creamer just as flat as a pancake!"

"That's the capsheaf," chuckled Neale O'Neil. "Bubby Creamer is certainly a wonderful kid. What do you say, Aggie?" for the older girl had just appeared, ready dressed for a shopping excursion.

"Silk-wool to mend my sweater; pins—two kinds; pearl buttons for Dot's waists; a celluloid thimble for Linda; a pair of hose for Mrs. Mac—extra tops; Aunt Sarah's peppermints for Sunday service; lace for Ruthie's collar; hair ribbons for Tessie; a love of a waist I saw at Blackstein & Mape's! and——"

"Help! Help!" cried Neale, breaking in at last. "And you expect me to accompany you on a shopping trip, Aggie, when you've all those feminine folderols to buy?"

"Why not?" demanded Agnes, making innocent eyes. "I want you to carry my packages."

"All right. But you'll hitch me out in front of the store to a hitching post like any other beast of burden," returned Neale, following in her footsteps out of the side gate.

This was a Saturday. Ruth had said that if they were to have company all the following week and school was to open a week from Monday, they had all better get out their school books on this evening and begin to get familiar with the studies they were to go back to so soon.

"At least, we would better see if we all remember our A B C's," she said dryly. "You, Sammy, after being out so long last term because of the scarlet fever, will have to make up some studies if you wish to keep up with your class."

"Don't care whether I keep up or not," growled Sammy. "I just hate school. Every time I think of it I feel like going right off and being a pirate, without waiting to learn navigation."

For Mr. Pinkney, who was a very wise man, had explained to Sammy that there was scarcely any use in his thinking of being a pirate if he could not navigate a ship. And navigation, he further explained, was a form of mathematics that could only be studied after one had graduated from high school and knew all about algebra.

Nevertheless, Sammy appreciated the fact that he was included in Ruth's invitation and could bring his books over to the Corner House sitting-room where the girls and Neale O'Neil were wont to study almost every week-day night during the school year.

Neale usually took supper at the Corner House on Saturday evenings and, considering the way he came back from the shopping expedition laden with bundles, he certainly deserved something for "the inner man," as he himself expressed it. A truly New England Saturday night supper was almost always served by Mrs. MacCall—baked beans, brown bread and codfish cakes.

And pudding! Mrs. MacCall was famous for her "whangdoodle pudding and lallygag sauce"—a title she had given once to cottage pudding and its accompanying dressing to satisfy little folks' teasing questions as to "what is that?" Neale O'Neil was very fond of this delicacy.

As he passed his plate for a second helping on this occasion he quoted with becoming reverence: "The woman that maketh a good pudding is better than a tart reply."

"But Mrs. Adams made a tart once," observed Dot seriously, "and instead of sifting powdered sugar on it she got hold of her sand-shaker, and when she gave Margaret Pease and me each a piece it gritted our teeth so we couldn't eat it. So then," concluded Dot, "she found out what she had done."

"If she'd given it to Sammy Pinkney," Tess said morosely, "I guess he'd have eaten it right down and never said a word. I saw him drop his bread and butter and 'lasses on the ground once, and he picked it right up and ate it. He said the ground was clean!"

"No wonder Sammy's such a gritty little chap," chuckled Neale.

"Well," Mrs. MacCall said cheerfully, and with her usual optimism, "it's an old saying that everybody has to eat a peck of dirt before he dies."

"So 'tis, Mrs. MacCall," Aunt Sarah rejoined from her end of the table, and with a scornful sniff. "But I want to know whose dirt I'm eating. That Sammy Pinkney is nothing but a little animal."

This puzzled Dot somewhat, and she whispered to Ruth: "Ruthie, are good little boys, then, vegetables!"

"No, dear," the elder sister said, smiling while the others laughed. "Both bad little boys and good little boys, as well as girls, are human beings."

"And," said Tess soberly, trying to recall something she had learned in the past, "there isn't any difference between bad girls and bad boys, only the boys are of the male sex and the girls are of the feline sex."

At that statement there was a burst of laughter.

"You certainly said something that time, Tess," declared Neale. "For if there is anything more feline than a girl that's mad—"

"Nothing like that, Neale O'Neil," interrupted Agnes quickly. "You would better sing pretty small, young man. Remember you are outnumbered."

"Yes," said Tess sedately, "you haven't even Sammy here now to take your part, you know, Neale."

"True for you, Tessie," agreed Neale. "I am in an infinitesimal minority."

Dot's eyes opened wide as these long words sounded from the boy's lips, and she gulped just as though she were swallowing them down for digestion. Agnes' eyes twinkled as she asked the smallest girl:

"Did you get those two, honey?"

"Don't make fun of her," admonished Ruth, aside.

"Well," sighed Dot, soberly, "I do hope I'll get into big words in the reading book this next term. I love 'em. Why! Tess is awfully far ahead of me; she can spell words in four cylinders!"

And that closed the evening meal with a round of laughter that Dot did not understand.