CHAPTER I
ALL UP IN THE AIR

It all began because Tess Kenway became suddenly and deeply interested in aeroplanes, airships and "all sort of flying things," as Dot, the smallest Corner House girl, declared.

Perhaps one should modify that "suddenly"; for Tess had begun to think about flying – as a profession – as long ago as the winter before (and that was really a long time for a little girl of her age) when she had acted as Swiftwing the Hummingbird in the children's play of The Carnation Countess.

At any rate she said to Sammy Pinkney, who was almost their next door neighbor, only he lived "scatecornered" across Willow Street, that she wished she had an airship.

And there! "Scatecornered" must be explained too; it was an expression of Uncle Rufus' who was the Corner House girls' chief factotum and almost an heirloom in the family, for he had long served Uncle Peter Stower, who in dying had willed the beautiful old homestead in Milton to his four grand-nieces.

"Just what does 'scatecornered' mean, Uncle Rufus?" asked Dot, who delighted in polysyllables.

"Why, chile, 'scatecornered' am a pufficly good word, fo' I has used it all ma life. It's – er – well, it's sort of a short-cut for de meanin' of slantindicular an crisscrosswise; w'ich means dat it ain't straight an' ain't crooked, but sort o' – er – scatecornered. Dere, chile, now you knows."

"Yes, Uncle Rufus; thank you," said Dot, polite if she did feel rather dizzy after his explanation.

But it was with Tess, who was nearly two years older than Dot and thought herself vastly more grown up, and with Sammy Pinkney this story was begun, and one should stick to one's text.

"Yes," murmured Tess, "I wish I had an airship."

Sammy looked at her, rather awed. Lately he was beginning to feel a mite awed in Tess Kenway's company, anyway. She had always been a thoughtful child. Aunt Sarah Maltby declared she was uncanny and gave her the fidgets. Of late even the boy who desired to be a pirate found Tess puzzling.

"Huh! An airship? What would you do with it? Where would you keep it?" he finally demanded, his queries being nothing if not practical.

Really Tess had not addressed him directly. She had just audibly expressed a thought, and one that had long been in her mind in embryo. So she did not answer the neighbor boy, who was sitting beside her on the side stoop of the Corner House, rigging a self-whittled ship to sail in the horse-trough.

"You know very well it wouldn't go in the garage; and the toolshed and the henhouse – even Tom Jonah's house – are all too small. Huh! that's like a girl! Never look ahead to see what they'd do with an airship if somebody gave 'em one."

"Well, I don't s'pose anybody will," admitted Tess, with a sigh, having heard at least the last part of Sammy's speech.

"Anybody will what?" demanded Sammy, beginning to be somewhat confused, partly from not knowing what he himself had been saying.

"Give us an airship."

"I should say not!" ejaculated Sammy. "Why, Tess Kenway, an airship would cost 'most a million dollars!"

"Is that so?" she said, accepting Sammy's slight overestimate of the price of a flying machine quite placidly.

"And folks don't give away such presents. I should say not!" with scorn.

"Why, Neale O'Neil's Uncle Bill Sorber wants to give Dot and me a calico pony, and that must be worth a lot of money."

"Huh! What's a calico pony? Like one of these Teddy bears?" sniffed Sammy. "Stuffed with cotton?"

"No it isn't, Mr. Saucebox!" broke in Agnes Kenway, the second and prettiest of the Corner House girls, who had just come out on the porch to brush her sport coat and had overheard the boy's observation. "That calico pony is well stuffed with good oats and hay if it belongs to Twomley & Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie. Neale's Uncle Bill feeds his horses till they are as fat as butter."

"Oh!" murmured Sammy. "A real pony?" and his eyes began to shine. He had owned a goat (it was now Tess' property) and he now possessed a bulldog. But he foresaw "larks" if the two smaller Corner House girls got a pony. The older ones often went out in the motor-car without Tess and Dot, and the suggestion of the pony may have been a roundabout way of appeasing the youngsters.

"But say!" the boy added, "why did you call it calico? That's what they make kids' dresses out of, isn't it?"

"Mine's gingham and I'm not a kid," declared Tess both promptly and with warmth.

"Aw, well, I didn't mean you," explained Sammy. "And why do they call a pony 'calico'?"

This was too much for Tess and she put it up to Agnes.

"Why – now," began the older sister, "you – you know what a calico cat is, Sammy Pinkney?"

"Ye-es," Sammy said it rather doubtfully, however. "That's like Miss Pettingill's got down the street, ain't it?"

"O-o!" cried Tess. "That's all colors, that old cat is!"

"It's sort of mottled and patchy. That's it – patchy!" declared Agnes, seizing the suggestion of "calico" and "patchwork" to make out her case.

"But," complained Tess, "I didn't think the pony would be as many colors as Miss Pettingill's cat. You know she calls him Rainbow."

"Why, the pony is only brown and white – or cream color," Agnes said with more confidence. "And maybe a little pink."

"Ho! ho!" snorted Sammy. "Now you are stringin' us. Who ever heard of a pink horse?"

Agnes went in without hearing this remark, and perhaps it was as well for Sammy Pinkney. Tess said severely:

"Our Agnes does not string people, Sammy. If she says the pony is pink, it is pink, you may be certain sure."

"And chocolate and cream color, too?" sniffed the boy. "Hum! I guess a pony as funny as that would be, could fly too. So you'll be fixed up all right, Tess Kenway."

"Dear me," sighed the little girl, coming back to their original topic of conversation. "I wish we did have something that would fly."

Now, secretly, Sammy was very fond of Tess. When he had had the scarlet fever that spring and early summer, his little neighbor with the serious face and dreamy look had been the most attentive friend one could ever expect to have.

She had called morning and night at his house to get the "bulletin" of his condition; and when he was up again and the house was what Dot Kenway had mentioned as "fumigrated," Tess had spent long hours amusing the boy until he could play out of doors again.

Besides, she had much to do with his accompanying the Corner House girls on their recent motoring trip, and Sammy's own mother said that that vacation journey had "made a new boy of Sammy."

This new boy, therefore, did not scorn to put his mind to the problem of Tess Kenway's distress. But an airship!

"I say, Tess," he said at last with some eagerness, "how'd one of them airmajigs be that father brought me home from the city once – only a bigger one?"

"What is an airmajig?" demanded Tess, her curiosity aroused if nothing more.

"Well, it's a dinky thing – pshaw! you remember. You stretched a wire, and then wound it up – "

"Wound up the wire?"

"Naw! Oh, jingo! The ship, I mean. It was run by a clock. And you hung it on the wire when it was wound."

"The clock?" asked Tess, still absent-mindedly.

"Oh! Je-ru-sa-lem! Girls don't know nothin' about mechanics," snarled Sammy. "What's the use!"

Tess asked in an apologetic voice, after a moment of silence:

"What happened, Sammy?"

"What happened to what?"

"The airmajig?"

"Why, it traveled right along the wire – hanging to it, you know," explained the little boy with more enthusiasm. "It would go as far as the wire was long. Why, I bet, Tess Kenway, that it would run from your house to mine. And it wiggled its wings just like a bird. And there was a tin man in it. But pshaw! that was just for kids. It was a toy. But a bigger one – "

"Oh, Sammy! big enough to carry us?" gasped Tess, clasping her hands.

"Er – well – now," hesitated Sammy, whose own imagination was hampered by a very practical streak in his character. "That would be some airship, wouldn't it? To carry us. It would have to be pretty big, and the wire'd have to be awful strong."

"Oh, it wouldn't be flying, then," sighed Tess.

"But say!" he exclaimed more eagerly, "couldn't we fly your dolls in it – yours and Dot's?"

"Oh!"

"That would be great!"

The screen door slammed behind them. "No," declared a serious and very decisive voice. "You sha'n't fly my Alice-doll like a kite, Sammy Pinkney. So there!"

They turned to the dark, fairy-like little girl who had appeared fresh from her afternoon toilet at the hands of Mrs. MacCall, the old Scotch housekeeper who loved the Corner House girls as though they were her own.

Dot, as usual, clung tightly to the pink-faced, fair-haired doll which of all her "children" was her favorite. The Alice-doll had been through so many adventures, and suffered such peril and disaster, that Dot could scarcely bear that she should be out of her sight for fear some new calamity would happen to her.

Therefore Dot said quite firmly:

"No, Sammy Pinkney. You're not going to fly my Alice-doll. And I should think you'd be 'shamed, Tessie Kenway, to let him even talk about it."

"Aw, who's goin' to hurt your old doll?" growled Sammy.

"She's not an old doll, I'd have you know, Sammy Pinkney!" responded Dot, ready to argue the point with anybody. "She's just been made over. Didn't Neale O'Neil have her taken to the hospital? And didn't they make over her face just like society ladies get theirs done by a der – der-ma-olywog?"

"Mercy, child!" gasped Tess. "'Dermatologist' the word is. Ruth told us."

"And they bleached her hair," concluded the excited Dot. "So there! Lots of ladies have their hair bleached. It's quite fashioningble."

"Dot! Dot!" begged the purist, Tess, "do get your words right if you will use such long ones."

Dot haughtily overlooked any such interruptions. "So," said she, "you sha'n't make a kite out of my Alice-doll," and she hugged the child to her bosom with emphasis.

"It isn't a kite," explained Tess, indulgently. "Sammy was talking about airships. He had one that had a clock in it and it flew on a wire – "

"Oo-ee!" squealed Dot suddenly. "I 'member about that, Sammy Pinkney. And your mother said you shouldn't ever have such a contraption in the house again. It busted the parlor lamp."

"Oh, dear! I wish you'd say 'bursted,'" sighed her sister.

"But if it had been out of doors," Sammy grumbled, "where there weren't any lamps and things, it would have worked fine. I tell you, Tess, we could string it from your house to mine, and the carrier could be loaded up at one station and unloaded and loaded again at the other. Crickey, it would be fun!"

"But maybe Ruthie wouldn't let us do it," suggested Tess, beginning to be enamored of the boy's idea, yet having her doubts about the feasibility of the plan. "It would knock people's hats off."

"What would!" gasped Sammy.

"The wire – or the airship traveling back and forth."

"Oh, Je-ru-sa-lem,'" again exploded Sammy. "You wanted an airship, didn't you? 'Way up in the air – not so's you can reach it from the ground. Why, we'll string the wire from my bedroom window to one of the windows of the room you and Dot sleep in."

"Oh!" cried Dot, beginning to visualize the scheme now. "Just like the cash-carriers in the Five and Ten Cent Store."

"But Ruthie wouldn't let us, I'm afraid," murmured Tess, still doubtful.

"Let's ask her," said Sammy.

"Oh, let's!" cried Dot.

But when they hunted for Ruth, the eldest of the four Corner House girls, she was not to be found on the premises; and if the children had but known it just at that time Ruth Kenway was having an adventure of her own which was, later, to prove of immense interest to all the Corner House family.