"Oh, Mrs. Trouble and Double Trouble, or Barnabetta Scruggs and her father, don't count," Agnes hastened to say. "_They_ were only people we took in. But the Shepards are real guests. And I'm so glad you decided upon giving them two of the big front rooms, Ruthie. Those guest rooms that Uncle Peter had shut up for so many years are just beautiful. There aren't such great rooms, or such splendid old furniture in Milton, as we have." "We have much to be thankful for," said Ruth placidly. "We've a lot to be proud of," amended Agnes. "And our auto! My! Think of us poor little miserable Kenways cutting such a dash." "And yet you were just now longing for more nice things," pointed out Ruth. "That's my fatal ambition," sighed her sister. "I am a female--No! A _feline_--as Tess says--Napoleon. I long for more worlds to conquer like Alexander. I dream of great things like Sir Humphrey Davy and Newton. I--" "Do be feminine in your comparisons, if not feline," suggested Ruth, laughing. "Speak of great women, not of great men." "Oh, indeed! Why, pray? Boadicea? Queen Elizabeth? Joan of Arc--" "Oh I know who _she_ was," declared Dot, who had been listening, open-eyed and open-mouthed, to this harangue of the volatile sister. "She was Noah's wife--and he built a big boat, and put horses and bears and pigs and goats on it so they wouldn't be drowned--and dogs and cats. And they were fruitful and multiplied and filled the earth--" "Oh, oh, oh!" shrieked Agnes. "That child will be the death of me! Where does she pick up her knowledge of scriptural history?" "I guess," said Ruth, kissing the pouting lips of Dot, who did not always take kindly to being laughed at, "that our old Sandyface must have been one of those cats Noah had. She has found four more little blind kittens somewhere. And what we shall do about it, I do not know." Dot and Tess ran squealing to the shed to see the new members of the Corner House family, while Neale said, chuckling: "It's a regular _cat_astrophe, isn't it? Better fill the motor car with feline creatures and let Aggie and me chase around through the country, dropping cats at farmers' barns." "Never!" proclaimed Agnes. "We mean to keep on good terms with all the farmers about Milton. We can't have them coming out and stopping us when we go by and demanding pay for all the hens you run over, Neale O'Neil." "Never yet ran over but one hen," declared the boy quickly. "And she was an old cluck hen--the farmer said so. He thought he really ought to pay me for killing her. And she made soup at that." "Come, come, come, children!" admonished Ruth. "Let us get out the books and see if we have quite forgotten everything we ever knew."