I'll do what you say, Neale. Only I wondered what for. Don't he
like band music?"

But Neale, considering it safer to say nothing more, merely repeated his
warning.

The children drove out every pleasant afternoon when school was over,
and within the fortnight Sammy and Tess and Dot were going about Milton
with the pony through the shady and quiet streets, as though they had
always done so. Therefore the older Corner House girls and Neale could
take their friends to drive in the motor-car, without crowding in the
two smaller children.

The "newness" of the automobile having worn off for Tess and Dot, they
much preferred the basket carriage and the fat pony. They, too, could
take their little friends driving, and this added a feeling of
importance to their pleasure in the pony.

Had Tess had her way every sick or crippled child in town would have
ridden behind the calico pony. She wanted at once to go to the Women's
and Children's Hospital, where their very dear friend, Mrs. Eland, had
been matron and for the benefit of which _The Carnation Countess_ had
been given by the school children of Milton, and take every unfortunate
child, one after another, out in the basket carriage.

Their schoolmates especially had to be invited to ride, and Sadie
Goronofsky from Meadow Street, and Alfredia Blossom, Uncle Rufus'
granddaughter, were not neglected.

"I do declare!" said Aunt Sarah, with some exasperation, as she saw the
pony and cart, with its nondescript crew, start off one afternoon for a
jog around the Parade Ground. "I do declare! What riffraff Tess manages
to pick up. For she certainly must be the biggest influence in gathering
every rag, tag and bobtail child in the neighborhood. I never did see
such a youngster."

"It isn't that Tessie's tastes are so heterodox," Ruth said, smiling
quietly, "but her love for others is so broad."

"Humph!" snapped Aunt Sarah. "It's a wonder to me the child hasn't
brought smallpox into the family from going as she does to those awful
tenements on Meadow Street."

Aunt Sarah had always been snobbish in her tendencies, even in her days
of poverty; and since she enjoyed the comforts and luxuries of the old
Corner House it must be confessed that this unpleasant trait in the old
woman's character had been considerably developed.

"The only tenements she goes to on Meadow Street are our own," Ruth
replied with vigor. "If they are conducted so badly that diseases become
epidemic the