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."