"Goodness! what does it say?" responded Tess, puzzled for the moment.

"Why! it looks just like what was tacked on the front door of the Creamers' house when Mabel's sisters had quarantine. Don't you 'member?"

demanded Dot.

"Oh, dear me!" cried Tess. "It's scarlet fever. Then Sammy's really got it!"

"Is-is it catching?" asked Dot, backing away and hugging tighter her Alice-doll, which she had s.n.a.t.c.hed out of the carriage.

"I-guess-so," said Tess. "Oh, poor Sammy!"

"Do you 'spect he'll _die_?" asked Dot, in awed tone.

"Oh, goodness me! I don't know!" exclaimed Tess.

"And won't he ever grow up to be a pirate?" queried Dot, for to the mind of the smallest Corner House girl romance gilded Sammy Pinkney's proposed career.

"Scarlet fever's dreadful bad. And we mustn't go in," Tess said.

"I'm sorry for Sammy," observed Dot. "I think he's a terrible int'resting boy."

"You shouldn't be interested in the boys," declared prudish Tess.

"Huh! _you_ wanted to come here to see how he was," responded the smallest Corner House girl, shrewdly.

"But I don't think of him as a _boy_. I'm just sorry for him 'cause he's a human being," declared Tess, loftily.

"Oh!"

"I'd be sorry for anybody who had scarlet fever."

"Well," Dot said, rather weary of the subject, "let's go over to see Mabel Creamer. Now we're out with our doll carriages, we ought to call somewhere."

Tess agreed to this and the little girls wheeled their baby carriages around the corner to their next door neighbor's, on the other side of the old Corner House.

The Creamer cottage seemed wonderfully quiet and deserted in appearance as they went in at the gate and pushed their doll carriages up to the side porch.

"Do you s'pose they're all away?" worried Tess.

"Maybe they've got the scarlet fever, too," murmured Dot, in awe.

But just then a figure appeared at the sitting room window which, on spying the Corner House girls, began to jump up and down and make urgent gestures for them to come in.

"It's Mabel," said Tess. "And she must be all alone."

"Oh, goody! then her sisters can't boss us," cried Dot, hurrying to drag her Alice-doll's new go-cart up the steps.

Mabel, the Creamer girl nearest the little Kenways' own ages, ran to open the door.

"Oh, hurrah!" she cried. "Come in, _do_! Tess and Dot Kenway. I'm so lonesome I could kill flies! Dear me! how glad I am to see you," and she hugged them both and then danced around them again.

"Are you all alone, Mabel?" asked Dot, struggling with her hood and coat in the warm hall.

"Well, Minnie" (that was the maid's name) "has just run down to the store. She won't be gone long. But I might as well be all alone.

Mother's gone to Aunt Em's and Lydia's taken Peg to have a tooth pulled."

"But the baby?" asked Tess. "Didn't I just hear him?"

"Oh, yes," said Mabel, scowling. "I've got to mind the baby. I told Lydia _I'd_ go have a tooth pulled and Peg could mind him. I'd rather."

"Oh!" cried Dot, in awe, while Tess marched straight into the sitting room to see if the Creamers' youngest was all right.

"You don't deserve to have a baby brother, Mabel Creamer," Tess said severely.

"Oh, I wish we could have one!" Dot said longingly.

"Say! you can have this one for all I care," declared Mabel. "You don't know what a nuisance babies are. Everybody else can go out but me. I've got to stay and mind the baby. Nasty thing!"

"Oh, Mabel!" said Tess, sorrowfully-for Tess had no objection to boys as small as Bubby Creamer. The baby laughed, and crowed, and stretched out his arms to her. "Isn't he the cunning little thing, Dot?" cooed Tess.

"He's the nicest baby I ever saw," agreed the smallest Corner House girl.

"Oh, yes," growled Mabel, who had been the baby in the family herself for a long time before Bubby came. "Oh, yes, he's so cunning! Look at him now-trying to get his foot in his mouth. If I bite my fingernails mother raps me good; but that kid can swallow his whole foot and they think he's cute!"

"Oh, Mabel! does he really swallow his foot?" gasped Dot. "I should think it would choke him."

"Wish it would!" declared the savage sister of the cooing Bubby Creamer.

"Then I could get out and play once in a while. Lydia and Peg put it on me, anyway. They get the best of everything."

"Oh, let's play right here," suggested Tess, interrupting this ill-natured tirade. "You get your new doll, Mabel."

"No. If I do _he'll_ want it. See! he's trying to grab your Alice-doll right now, Dot Kenway."

"Oh! he can't have _her_," Dot gasped, in alarm. "Haven't you an _old_ dolly you can let him play with, Mabel?"

"He's got one of his own-a black boy. As black as your Uncle Rufus. I'll hunt around for it," said the ungracious Mabel.

Afterward, when the little Kenways were on their way home, after bidding Mabel and Bubby good-bye, Dot confessed to her sister:

"I don't so much like to go to see Mabel Creamer, after all. She's always so scoldy."

"I know," agreed Tess. "And she's real inquisitive, too. Did you hear her asking 'bout Neale?"

"I didn't notice," Dot said.

"Why, she says they saw Neale O'Neil going through our yard with a heavy traveling bag yesterday morning, and he went out our front gate. She asked where he was going."

"But you don't know where Neale has gone," said Dot, complacently, "so she didn't find out anything. And _I'd_ like to know where he's gone, too. There's all his presents off the Christmas tree; and we can't see them till he comes back, Ruthie says."