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"Oh! we don't want to have trouble with any neighbor," objected Ruth, quickly. "My! you'd let folks ride right over you," said Agnes, with scorn for Ruth's timidity. "I don't think that poor cobbler, Mr. Murphy, will ride over me unless he rides on his pig," laughed Ruth, as she followed Mrs. MacCall indoors. Tess had an idea and she was frank to express it. "Uncle Rufus, this goat is very strong.
"Don' yo' worry 'bout me none; I'll be cropin' down erbout noon." But Mrs. MacCall would not hear to his moving. Then Tess and Dot carried up his hot breakfast on one of the best trays, with a nice white napkin laid over it. "Glo-ree! Chillen, yo' mak' a 'ninvalid out o' Unc' Rufus, an' he nebber wanter git up out'n hes baid at all.
"Because you called me 'tow-head," he whispered, grinning. When Mrs. MacCall caught her first glimpse of him when they got up to sing, she started, stared, and almost expressed her opinion aloud. "What under the canopy's the matter with that boy's head?" she whispered to Ruth when they were seated again. And there was reason for asking!
MacCall was housekeeper and she mothered the orphaned Kenway girls and seemed much nearer to them than Aunt Sarah Maltby, who sat most of her time in the big front room upstairs, seldom speaking to her nieces. Mrs. MacCall was buxom, gray-haired and every hair was martialed just so, and all imprisoned in a cap when the good lady was cooking.
All three scolding her, and making for her, made Popocatepetl quite hysterical. She arched her back, spit angrily, and then dove from the table. In her flight she overturned the china cup of molasses which fell to the floor and broke. The sticky liquid was scattered far and wide. "That kitten!" Mrs. MacCall shrieked. "Wait! wait!" begged Ruth, trying to grab up Petal.
A goat is the very last thing I could ever find a use for in this world. But I s'pose the Creator knew what He was about when He made them." "I think they're lots of fun," said roly-poly Agnes, giggling again. "Fun! Ah! what's that he's eatin' this very minute?" screamed Mrs. MacCall, and she started for the door. She led the way to the porch, and immediately plunged down the steps into the yard.
Neale disappeared for some time right after dinner. He had done all he could to help Uncle Rufus and Mrs. MacCall that forenoon, and had promised Ruth to come back for supper. "I wouldn't miss Mrs. MacCall's beans and fishcakes for a farm!" he declared, laughing. But he did not laugh as much as he had when he first came to the old Corner House.
Aunt Sarah's keen eye lit up as she was shown all the interesting things about her new acquisition; but all the verbal comment she made was that she thought "you gals better be in better business than buying gewgaws for an old woman like me." "Just the same, she is pleased as Punch," Mrs. MacCall whispered to Ruth. "Only, she doesn't like to show it." The girls quickly came to their own presents.
"Some men is all gruff and bluff, but tender at heart. So's Why, how-d'ye-do, ma'am!" he said, getting up and bowing to Mrs. MacCall, whom he just saw. "I hope I see you well?" The housekeeper was rather amazed as well she might have been; but Tess, who had a good, memory, introduced the old showman quite as a matter of course. "This is Neale's uncle, Mrs. MacCall," she said.
MacCall, she had come to help Ruth and her sisters soon after their establishment in the old Corner House, and by this time had grown to be indispensable. This was the household, saving Sandyface, the cat, and her four kittens Spotty, Almira, Popocatepetl and Bungle. And now there was the goat, Mr. Billy Bumps. Ruth was an intellectual looking girl so people said.
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