nt followed their sitting
on the bench for at least half an hour.

"Why, I can't never!" she sighed, making it positive by at least two
negatives. "I never had an idea England had such an awful long string of
kings. It's worse than the list of Presidents of the United States."

"Is it?" Dot observed, curiously. "It must be awful annoyable to have to
learn 'em."

"Goodness, Dot! There you go again with one of your big words,"
exclaimed Tess, in vexation. "Who ever heard of 'annoyable' before? You
must have invented that."

Dot calmly ignored the criticism. It must be confessed that she loved
the sound of long words, and sometimes, as Agnes said, "made an awful
mess of polysyllables." Agnes was the Kenway next older than Tess, while
Ruth was seventeen, the oldest of all, and had for more than three years
been the house-mother of the Kenway family.

Ruth and Agnes were at home in the old Corner House at this very hour.
There lived in the big dwelling, with the four Corner House Girls, Aunt
Sarah Maltby (who really was no relative of the girls, but a partial
charge upon their charity), Mrs. MacCall, their housekeeper, and old
Uncle Rufus, Uncle Peter Stower's black butler and general factotum, who
had been left to the care of the old man's heirs when he died.

The first volume of this series, called "The Corner House Girls," told
the story of the coming of the four sisters and Aunt Sarah Maltby to the
Stower homestead, and of their first adventures in Milton--getting
settled in their new home and making friends among their neighbors.

In "The Corner House Girls at School," the second volume, the four
Kenway sisters extended the field of their acquaintance in Milton and
thereabout, entered the local schools in the several grades to which
they were assigned, made more friends and found some few rivals. They
began to feel, too, that responsibility which comes with improved
fortunes, for Uncle Peter Stower had left a considerable estate to the
four girls, of which Mr. Howbridge, the lawyer, was administrator as
well as the girls' guardian.

Now the second summer of their sojourn at the old Corner House was just
ending, and the girls had but recently returned from a most delightful
outing at Pleasant Cove, on the Atlantic Coast, some distance away from
Milton, which was an inland town.

All the fun and adventure of that vacation are related in "The Corner
House Girls Under Canvas," the third volume of the series, and t