wfully mad about
those strawberries to hold a grudge so long as this. I worked for him a
while, you know, Aggie."

"Oh, so you did, Neale."

"Yes. I don't believe he is the sort who would make so much trouble for
a bunch of girls. Somebody must have egged him on," said Neale,
gloomily.

"There you go again, Neale," groaned Agnes. "Hinting at Beatrice
Severn."

"Well," grinned Neale, "you want me to help you out of your scrape,
don't you?"

"At nobody else's expense," said Agnes.

"Don't know what to make of it," grumbled Neale. "It looks fishy to me.
Mr. Buckham writing Mr. Marks! I'm going to find out about _that_. Keep
up your pluck, Aggie. I'll see what can be done," and Neale, with his
cap on the back of his flaxen head and his hands in his pockets, went
off whistling.

CHAPTER VII

THE CORE OF THE APPLE

Dot Kenway came home a day or two after this, quite full of her first
"easy lessons in physiology." It always seemed to Dot that when she
learned a new fact it was the very first time it had ever been learned
by anybody.

"Dot is just like a hen," Neale O'Neil said, chuckling. "She gets hold
of a thing and you'd think nobody ever knew it before she did. She is
the original discoverer of every fact that gets into her little noddle."

"But how does that make her like a hen?" demanded Ruth.

"Why, a hen lays an egg, and then gets so excited about it and makes
such a racket, that you'd think that was the first egg that had been
laid since the world began."

"What is all this you learned, Dottie?" demanded Neale, as they all sat
around the study lamp; for Neale was often at the old Corner House with
his books in the evening. He and Agnes were in the same grade.

"Oh, Neale! did you know you had a spinal cord?" demanded the smallest
Corner House girl.

"No! you don't tell me? Where is it?" asked the boy, quite soberly.

"Why," explained the literal Dot, "it's a string that runs from the back
of your head to the bottom of your heels."

At the shout of laughter that welcomed this intelligence, Tess said,
comfortingly:

"Don't mind, Dot. That isn't half as bad as what Sammy Pinkney said to
Miss Pepperill the other day. She asked us which was the most important
to keep clean, your face or your teeth, and Sammy shouted: 'Your teeth,
teacher, 'cause they can rot off and your face can't.'"

"And I guess that awful Miss Pepperpot punished him for that," suggested
Dot, awed.

"Yes. Sammy is al