CHAPTER XII

A PICNIC WITH AGAMEMNON

“You see, gals, Agamemnon’s been the most unlucky bird that ever was hatched,” said the little old woman, coming across the tiny lawn to the fence where the Corner House girls were staring, round-eyed, at the strange apparition of a rooster in a red-flannel sleeping-suit.

“But he’s the pluckiest! Yes, ma’am! He was only a pindling critter when he pipped the shell, an’ the vi-cis-_si_-tudes that bird’s been through since he fust scratched would ha’ made a human lay right down and die.

“The other chickens never would let him raise a pin-feather ter cover his nakedness; they picked on him suthin’ _awful_. I shet him up till his wings and tail growed, an’ a rat got in an’ gnawed the feathers right off him in one night; but Agamemnon picked and clawed so’t the old rat didn’t bleed him much.

“And now here, lately, a neighbor got a half-breed game rooster, an’ thet pesky fightin’ bird got down here an’ sasses Agamemnon on his own premises.

“Ag wouldn’t stand for that,” said the old lady, her blue eyes fairly crackling. “He sailed right inter that game chicken—an’ Neighbor Lincoln et his rooster the nex’ Sunday for dinner. ’Twas all he could do with the critter after Agamemnon got through with him.

“But that game rooster had tore ev’ry _important_ feather off’n poor Agamemnon’s carcass. I had to do suthin’. ’Twarn’t decent for him to go ’round bare. So I made him that smock out of one o’ poor Eddie’s old shirts. And there ye be!” she finished breathlessly, smiling broadly upon the interested Corner House girls.

“I guess you are Mrs. Bobster?” asked Ruth, smiling in return.

“Are you _really_ the—the lady who lives in the shoe?” asked Dot, round-eyed.

“That’s what they call me, pet,” said Mrs. Bobster, smiling at the smallest Kenway. “I’m the only little old woman who lives in _this_ shoe. Poor Eddie thought we’d make a mint of money if we built over the top of our house like that, and I sold gingercakes and sweeties to the children who came down here to the beach. Eddie was allus mighty smart in thinkin’ up schemes for me to make money. But the Beach Company went up in smoke, as the sayin’ is; so we didn’t make our fortun’ after all.”

She laughed. Indeed, this little, apple-faced old lady was almost always laughing, it seemed.

“Poor Eddie!” she added. “I guess the Beach Company failin’ took about all the tuck out o’ him. He said himself it was the last straw on the camel’s back. He jest settled right down inter his chair, like; and he didn’t last that winter out. He was allus weakly, Eddie was.”

The Corner House girls knew she must be speaking of her husband. So now she was all alone in the house that had such a grotesque upper story.

“No. There ain’t no children here—only them that comes in to see me,” Mrs. Bobster said in answer to a question from Tess. “We never did have no children; but we allus loved ’em.”

Meanwhile she had opened the gate and invited the Corner House girls into the yard. There was an arbor which was already shaded by quick-growing vines. The little kitchen garden, with its border of gooseberries and currants, was as neat as it could be.

“I gotter cow of my own out back, and hens, too. I make a bare livin’ in winter, and put frills onto it in summer,” and the old lady laughed. “These folks from the city that come livin’ in tents here, like my bread and cookies.”

“That is what we have come to arrange for, Mrs. Bobster,” said Ruth.

“I dunno. Most all I can comferbly bake three times a week, is bespoke,” said the little old woman who lived in a shoe. “How many is there in your fam’bly, Miss?”

When she heard that there were just four of them—these girls alone—and that they were to live by themselves in a tent, she grew greatly interested.

“Surely I’ll bake for you—and cookies, too. Maybe a fruit pie oncet in a while—’specially if you’ll go over beyond the bend when berries is ripe and pick ’em yourself. And you gals a-livin’ all alone? Sho! I’d think you’d be scaret to death.”

“Why, no!” said Ruth. “Why should we?”

“After dark,” said the old woman, shaking her hand.

“Who would hurt us?” asked the Corner House girl in wonder.

“Can’t most always sometimes tell,” said the old woman, shaking her head.

“But _you_ live here alone!”

“No,” she said, quickly. “Not after dark. I ain’t never alone. Oh, no!”

She spoke as though she were afraid Ruth might not believe her, and repeated the denial several times.

Tess and Dot were very anxious to go upstairs and see the rooms in the “shoe,” and they made the request to Ruth in an audible whisper.

“For sure!” cried Mrs. Bobster. “All the children that come here want to go upstairs. If I had ’em of my own, that’s where I’d put ’em all to bed after I’d fed ’em bread and ‘whipped ’em all soundly,’” and she laughed.

“I don’t believe you’d have whipped the children, if you’d been the really truly little old woman that lived in the shoe,” quoth Dot, putting a confiding hand into the apple-faced lady’s hard palm.

“I bet _you_ wouldn’t have had to be whipped,” laughed Mrs. Bobster, leading Dot away, with Tess following.

Later the hostess of the shoe-house brought out a pitcher of milk and glasses with a heaping plate of ginger cookies—the old-fashioned kind that just _melt_ on your tongue!

“Sho!” she said, when Ruth praised them. “It’s easy enough to make good merlasses cookies. But ye don’t wanter have no conscience when it comes to butter—no, indeed!”

Agamemnon came to the feast. In his ridiculous red flannel suit he waddled up to his mistress and pecked crumbs off her lap when she sat down on the bench in the arbor.

“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.

The crowd was delighted with the way Ruth and her sisters were situated. It looked as though to live under canvas would be great fun indeed.

“Wish I’d spoken to Uncle Phil about it, and gotten him to hire tents instead of putting us up at that old hotel,” declared Pearl. “And do you know, girls, that Trix Severn told a story?”

“I didn’t suppose she’d be above being untruthful,” Ruth said, rather indignantly.

“And you’re quite right. We found out that her father set aside a big, double-bedded room for you four girls. Trix says she did not know anything about it. But of course Uncle Phil would not have forgotten you.”

“Never mind,” said Agnes. “I’m glad she acted so. We’re a whole lot better off here.”

“I believe you!” said Carrie Poole.

“You going to have Rosa Wildwood here in the tent with you when she comes?” asked Ann Presby.

“I’m afraid she ought to have a better place,” said Ruth. “And I believe I know just where she would get the attention—and food—that she needs,” and the oldest Corner House girl told the crowd about Mrs. Bobster—the little old lady who lived in a shoe.

“If I can get the dear old thing to take Rosa to board, I know she’ll give her just what she needs—good food, plenty of it, well cooked, and Rosa will be in a quiet place where she can rest all she wants to,” said Ruth.

She had no idea at the time of the strange adventure that would arise out of this plan of hers to bring Rosa Wildwood to stay for a part of the summer with the little old woman who lived in a shoe.

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