Grace Hill: The Corner House Girls in a Play

"I never can learn them in the wide, wide world! I just know I never can, Dot!"

"Dear me! I'm dreadfully sorry for you, Tess," responded Dorothy Kenway – only nobody ever called her by her full name, for she really was too small to achieve the dignity of anything longer than "Dot."

"I'm dreadfully sorry for you, Tess," she repeated, hugging the Alice-doll a little closer and wrapping the lace "throw" carefully about the shoulders of her favorite child. The Alice-doll had never enjoyed robust health since her awful experience of more than a year before, when she had been buried alive.

Of course, Dot had not got as far in school as the sovereigns of England. She had not as yet heard very much about the history of her own country. She knew, of course, that Columbus discovered it, the Pilgrims settled it, that George Washington was the father of it, and Abraham Lincoln saved it.

Tess Kenway was usually very quick in her books, and she was now prepared to enter a class in the lower grammar grade of the Milton school in which she would have easy lessons in English history. She had just purchased the history on High Street, for school would open for the autumn term in a few days.

Mr. Englehart, one of the School Board and an influential citizen of Milton, had a penchant for beginning at the beginning of things. As he put it: "How can our children be grounded well in the history of our own country if they are not informed upon the salient points of English history – the Mother Country, from whom we obtained our first laws, and from whom came our early leaders?"

As the two youngest Kenway girls came out of the stationery and book store, Miss Pepperill was entering. Tess and Dot had met Miss Pepperill at church the Sunday previous, and Tess knew that the rather sharp-featured, bespectacled lady was to be her new teacher.

The girls whom Tess knew, who had already had experience with Miss Pepperill called her "Pepperpot." She was supposed to be very irritable, and she did have red hair. She shot questions out at one in a most disconcerting way, and Dot was quite amazed and startled by the way Miss Pepperill pounced on Tess.

"Let's see your book, child," Miss Pepperill said, seizing Tess' recent purchase. "Ah – yes. So you are to be in my room, are you?"

"Yes, ma'am," admitted Tess, timidly.

"Ah – yes! What is the succession of the sovereigns of England? Name them!"

Now, if Miss Pepperill had demanded that Tess Kenway name the Pleiades, the latter would have been no more startled – or no less able to reply intelligently.

"Ah – yes!" snapped Miss Pepperill, seeing Tess' vacuous expression. "I shall ask you that the first day you are in my room. Be prepared to answer it. The succession of the sovereigns of England," and she swept on into the store, leaving the children on the sidewalk, wonderfully impressed.

They had walked over into the Parade Ground, and seated themselves on one of the park benches in sight of the old Corner House, as Milton people had called the Stower homestead, on the corner of Willow Street, from time immemorial. Tess' hopeless announcement 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 the one immediately preceding the present story.

Tess was seldom vindictive; but after she had puzzled her poor brain for this half hour, trying to pick out and to get straight the Williams and Stephens and Henrys and Johns and Edwards and Richards, to say nothing of the Georges, who had reigned over England, she was quite flushed and excited.

"I know I'm just going to de- test that Miss Pepperpot!" she exclaimed. "I – I could throw this old history at her – I just could!"

"But you couldn't hit her, Tess," Dot observed placidly. "You know you couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because you can't throw anything straight – no straighter than Sammy Pinkney's ma. I heard her scolding Sammy the other day for throwing stones. She says, 'Sammy, don't you let me catch you throwing any more stones.'"

"And did he mind her?" asked Tess.

"I don't know," Dot replied reflectively. "But he says to her: 'What'll I do if the other fellers throw 'em at me?' 'Just you come and tell me, Sammy, if they do,' says Mrs. Pinkney."

"Well?" queried Tess, as her sister seemed inclined to stop.

"I didn't see what good that would do, myself," confessed Dot. "Telling Mrs. Pinkney, I mean. And Sammy says to her: 'What's the use of telling you, Ma? You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!' I don't think you could fling that hist'ry straight at Miss Pepperpot, Tess."

"Huh!" said Tess, not altogether pleased. "I feel I could hit her, anyway."

"Maybe Aggie could learn you the names of those sov-runs – "

"'Sovereigns'!" exclaimed Tess. "For pity's sake, get the word right, child!"

Dot pouted and Tess, being in a somewhat nagging mood – which was entirely strange for her – continued:

"And don't say 'learn' for 'teach.' How many times has Ruthie told you that?"

"I don't care," retorted Dorothy Kenway. "I don't think so much of the English language – or the English sov-er-reigns – so now! If folks can talk, and make themselves understood, isn't that enough?"