ship
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."

"Why, the pony is only brown and white--or cream color," Agnes said with
more confidence. "And maybe a little pink."

"Ho! ho!" snorted Sammy. "Now you are stringin' us. Who ever heard of a
pink horse?"

Agnes went in without hearing this remark, and perhaps it was as well
for Sammy Pinkney. Tess said severely:

"Our Agnes