wear them before
then, will you?" said Ruth.

"Oh, no," returned Neale. "I'm not going to parade these to school,
first off--just as Agnes does every new hair-ribbon she buys."

"Thank you, Mr. Smartie. Hair-ribbons aren't like suits of clothes, I
should hope."

"If they were," chuckled the boy, "I s'pose you'd have a pair of my
trousers tied on your pigtail and hanging down your back."

For that she chased him out of the house and they had a game of romps
down under the grape-arbor and around the garden.

"Dear me!" sighed Ruth, "Neale makes Aggie so tomboyish. I don't know
what to do about it."

"Sho, honey!" observed the housekeeper. "What do you care as long as
she's healthy and pretty and happy? Our Aggie is one of the best."

"Of course she is," rejoined the oldest Corner House girl. "But she's
getting so big--and is so boisterous. And see what trouble she has got
into about that frolic last spring. She can't play in this show that the
others are going to act in."

"That's too bad," said Mrs. MacCall, threading her needle. "If ever
there was a girl cut out to be a mimic and actress, it's Aggie Kenway."

"Don't for pity's sake tell her that!" cried Ruth, in alarm. "It will
just about make her crazy, if you do. She is being punished for raiding
that farmer's field--and it's right she should be punished----"

"Mean man!" snapped Aunt Sarah, suddenly. "Those gals couldn't have eat
many of his old berries."

"Oh! I don't think Mr. Bob Buckham is mean," Ruth observed slowly,
surprised to see Aunt Sarah take up cudgels for Agnes, whom the old lady
often called "hare-brained." "And he is not punishing the girls of the
basket ball team. Mr. Marks is doing that."

"How did Mr. Marks know about it?" put in Aunt Sarah again.

"Well, we suppose Mr. Buckham told him. So Mr. Marks said, I believe."

"Mean man, then!" reiterated the old lady.

That was her only comment upon the matter. But once having expressed her
opinion of the strawberry man, nothing on earth could have changed Aunt
Sarah's mind toward him.

Agnes herself could not hold any hard feeling toward Mr. Buckham. Not
after listening to his story, and being forgiven so frankly and freely
her part in the raid on the strawberry patch.

However much her sisters and the rest of the family felt for Agnes, the
latter suffered more keenly as the week went by. The teachers in each
grade took half an hour a day to read the synopsis of _The Carnation
Counte