Of course something ought to have happened to impress their wrong-doing on the children. But it didn't. They were all well and bright the next morning. Mr. Theodore Whitney took occasion to say that he hoped the Underhills wouldn't feel offended. It was just a young people's caper, and he thought it rather amusing.
Mrs. Whitney said in the bosom of her household: "Well, I wonder that Mrs. Underhill has an ounce of fat on her bones if she's worried that way about her eight children! I always felt to trust mine to Providence."
Jim "gave away" the thing at school, and was quite a hero. But some of the boys had crawled under a circus tent. And a circus was simply immense!
Lily Ludlow said, out of her bitterest envy, "I shouldn't have thought you would let a girl take you out, Jim Underhill!"
"She didn't take me! I bought my own ticket. And there was her cousin——"
"Well—if you like that style of people—and red hair—and Dele Whitney has no more figure than a post! I wouldn't be such a fat chunk for anything! And her clothes are just wild."
"Of course you're ever so much the prettiest. And I wish we could go to the Museum together, just us two." Jim thought it would be fine to take out one girl.
That mollified Lily a little.
"And I just wish you lived up by our house. It seems so easy then to come in. And when you once get real well acquainted—intimate like—well, you know I like you better than any girl in school;" though Jim wondered a little if it was absolutely true.
"Do you, really?" The eyes and the smile always conquered him. She made good use of both.