"Dear suz!" added the housekeeper. "I'm sure I never did _that_."
"You can't tell me 'twas _me_ done it," snapped Aunt Sarah.
"Oh, Neale!" wailed Ruth. "I didn't cut off but two inches."
"_You_, Niece Ruth?" exclaimed Aunt Sarah.
"Oh, oh!" sharply cried Mrs. MacCall. "I cut 'em off, too!"
Uncle Rufus almost dropped the dish of ham and eggs he was serving. Agnes shouted:
"Oh, my heart alive! _Six inches off the bottom of those trousers!_ You have gone back into short pants, Neale O'Neil, that's sure!"
So Neale O'Neil did not parade his new grey suit to church on that particular Sunday. Before the next came around Ruth had purchased another pair of trousers that fitted the white-haired boy, and the much cut-down pair was saved for patches.
Something quite as interesting to him and the Corner House girls as a new suit, appeared at the First Church, however, which they all attended. Mr. Bob Buckham was at the morning service.
The girls and Neale did not see the farmer till after the sermon. Then it was Agnes who first spied him, and she hurried back to where the old man was shaking hands with two or three of the elderly members of the congregation, who knew him.
Mr. Buckham in his Sunday clothes looked no more staid and respectable than he did at home; and his eyes twinkled as merrily and his smile was just as kind as on week-days.
"Hullo! here's one of my smart little friends," he exclaimed, welcoming Agnes. "How's your mind now, miss? Quite calm _and_ contented?"
"I feel better than I did," confessed Agnes. "But I'm paying for my wrong-doing just the same. You know, Mr. Buckham, you said you thought we almost always got punished for our sins right here and now. We are. We girls who stole from you, you know."
"Sho'! didn't I tell you to say no more about that?" cried the farmer.
"But Mr. Marks, our principal, is punishing us," Agnes told him.
"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Mr. Buckham, innocently.
"Eva and Myra and Mary and a lot of them, as well as myself, are forbidden to take any part in the play that is going to be given for the benefit of the Women's and Children's Hospital."
"Wal, that's what I call rough!" the farmer admitted. "To my mind the berries weren't worth all this catouse over 'em. No, sir!"