O’Neil had spent several pleasant evenings there during the winter and spring.
The night before this party there was a big wind, and a part of one of the chimneys came down into the side yard during the night with a noise like thunder; so Ruth had to telephone for a mason before breakfast.
Had it not been for this happening, the Corner House girls – at least, Ruth and Agnes – and Neale O’Neil, would have escaped rather an embarrassing incident at the party.
Neale came over to supper the evening of the party, and he brought his pumps in a newspaper under his arm.
“Come on, girls, let’s have your dancing slippers,” he said to the two older Corner House girls, who were going to the dance. “I’ll put them with mine.”
And he did so – rolling the girls’ pretty slippers up in the same parcel with his own. He left the parcel in the kitchen. Later it was discovered that the mason’s helper had left a similarly wrapped parcel there, too.
When the three young folk started off, it was Agnes who ran back after the bundle of dancing slippers. Neale carried it under his arm, and they walked briskly out through the suburbs of Milton and on along the Buckshot road.
“Are you really going to Pleasant Cove this summer, Neale?” demanded Agnes, as they went on together.
“If I can. Joe has asked me. And you girls?”
“Trix says we must come to her father’s hotel for two weeks at least,” Agnes declared.
“Humph!” said Neale, doubtfully. “Are you going, Ruth?”
“I – don’t – know,” admitted the older Corner House girl.
“Now, isn’t that just too mean?” complained Agnes. “You just say that because you don’t like Trix.”
“I don’t know whether Trix will be of the same mind when the time comes,” said Ruth, firmly.
“I believe you,” grunted Neale.
Agnes pouted. “It’s just mean of you,” she said. “Of course she will want us to go.” While Agnes was “spoons” with a girl, she was always strictly loyal to her. She could not possibly see Trix Severn’s faults just now.
They arrived at the farmhouse and found a crowd already assembled. There was a great deal of talking and laughter, and while Neale stood chatting with some of the boys in the hall, Ruth and Agnes came to him for their slippers.
“Sure!” said the boy, producing the newspaper-wrapped bundle he carried. “Guess I’ll put on my own pumps, too.”
He unrolled the parcel. Then a yell of derision and laughter arose from the onlookers; instead of three pairs of dancing slippers, Neale produced two pairs of half-worn and lime-bespattered shoes belonging to the masons who had repaired the old Corner House chimney!
“Now we can’t dance!” wailed Agnes.
“Oh, Neale!” gasped Ruth, while the young folk about them went off into another gale of laughter.
“Well, it wasn’t my fault,” grumbled Neale. “Aggie went after the bundle.”
“Shouldn’t have left them right there with the masons’ bundle – so now!” snapped Agnes.
CHAPTER IV – THE MYSTERY OF JUNE WILDWOOD
Now, Trix Severn had maneuvered so as to get the very first dance with Neale O’Neil. Among all the boys who attended the upper grammar grades, and the High, of Milton, the boy who had been brought up in a circus was the best dancer. The older girls all were glad to get him for a partner.
Time had been when Trix sneered at “that circus boy,” but that was before he and the two older Corner House girls had saved Trix from a collapsing snow palace back in mid-winter.
Since that time she had taken up with Agnes Kenway as her very closest chum, and she had visited the old Corner House a good deal. When Agnes and her sister arrived at the party on this evening, with Neale as escort, Trix determined to have at least one dance with the popular boy.
“Oh, Neale!” she whispered, fluttering up to him in her very nicest way, “Ruth and Agnes will be half an hour primping, upstairs. The music is going to strike up. Do let us have the first dance.”
“All right,” said Neale, good-naturedly.
It was the moment later that the discovery was made of the masons’ shoes in the bundle he carried under his arm.
“Now we can’t dance,” repeated Agnes, when the laughter had somewhat subsided.
“Oh, Neale can dance just as well,” Trix said, carelessly. “Come on, Neale! You know this is our dance.”
Of course Neale could dance in his walking shoes. But he saw Agnes’ woebegone face and he hesitated.
“It’s too bad, Aggie,” he said. “If it wasn’t so far – ”
“Why, Neale O’Neill” snapped Trix, unwisely. “You don’t mean to say you’d be foolish enough to go clear back to the Corner House for those girls’ slippers?”
Perhaps it was just this opposition that was needed to start Neale off. He pulled his cap from his pocket and turned toward the door, with a shrug. “I guess I can get back in an hour, Ag. Don’t you and Ruth dance much in your heavy shoes until then. You’ll tire yourselves all out.”
“Why, Neale O’Neill” cried Trix. “You won’t do it?”
Even Ruth murmured against the boy’s making the trip for the slippers. “We can get along, Neale,” she said, in her quiet way.
“And you promised to dance with me this first dance,” declared Trix, angrily, as the music began.
Neale did not pay much attention to her – at the moment. “It’s my fault, I guess,” he said, laughing. “I’ll go back for them, Ag.”
But Trix got right between him and the door. “Now! you sha’n’t go off and leave me in the lurch that way, Neale O’Neill” she cried, shrilly.
“Aw – There are other dances. Wait till I come back,” he said.
“You can dance in the shoes you have on,” Trix said, sharply.
“What if?”
“But we can’t, Trix,” interposed Agnes, much distressed. “Ruth and I, you know – ”
“I don’t care!” interrupted Trix, boiling over at last. “You Corner House girls are the most selfish things! You’d spoil his fun for half the party – ”
“Aw, don’t bother!” growled Neale, in much disgust.
“I will bother! You – ”
“Guess she thinks she owns you, Neale,” chuckled one of the boys, adding fuel to the flames. Neale did not feel any too pleasant after that. He flung away from Trix Severn’s detaining grasp.
“I’m going – it isn’t any of your concern,” he muttered, to the angry girl.
Ruth bore Agnes away. She was half crying. The rift in the intimacy between her soulmate and herself was apparent to all.
To make the matter worse – according to Trix’s version – when Neale finally returned, almost breathless, with the mislaid slippers, he insisted, first of all, upon dancing with Ruth and Agnes. Then he would have favored Trix (Ruth had advised it), but the angry girl would not speak to him.
“He’s nothing but a low circus boy, anyway!” she told Lucy Poole. “And I don’t think really well-bred girls would care to have anything to do with him.”
Those who heard her laughed. They had known Trix Severn’s ways for a long time. She had been upon her good behavior; but it did not surprise her old acquaintances that she should act like this.
It made a difference to the Corner House girls, however, for it made their plans about going to Pleasant Cove uncertain.
The