"Too much else to do. Set that pan of lettuce on the table, please. Don't you see how busy I am?" And Cherry drew towards her a basket of green peas and began to shell with all her might.
"I see it—to the depths of my heart," Magnus answered as he did her bidding. "Here, Viola, give us your apron. If I don't sit down and help this girl, I shall have her fainting away on my hands."
"No, you will not," Cherry said very decidedly.
But Magnus spied a spare apron on a nail, and, tying it carefully round his neck, he put himself down on the doorstep, and dived in among the pea pods. Always taking, if he could, the very one of which Cherry had laid hold, and then dropping that and seizing her fingers, and then mysteriously scattering the peas from his own hands or shaking them out of hers, so that the rolling things had to be sought on all sides. Which last process Cadet Kindred pursued so zealously that more than once his face and Cherry's shining locks came very near together.
The sisters looked on, laughing and delighted. For just so those two had teased and scolded and played together, since they were big enough to play, and to see it all go on again in the old fashion was too good for anything. Of the subtile difference that had crept in, their young eyes took no note. And Cherry herself tried hard to ignore it, laughing with the rest, and very well holding her own, but dimly conscious all the while that things she would have ventured once, she did not venture now.
"Boy, why do you tie that string round your neck?" said Rose. "Have you forgotten how aprons are worn?"
"A lost art. But this is the improved style, which I mean to introduce at West Point. I cannot see how the Tactical Department has overlooked aprons so long. We're too young to know when to wear overcoats, so aprons to keep our trousers clean would be just the thing. I'll introduce them."
"When you go back, I suppose," said Rose sarcastically. "I'll lend you mine for a pattern."
"When I go back as Com.," Magnus answered with dignity. "When I am Com. and Cherry is Supe. then you'll see."
"You could see now, if you would look," said Cherry, as a podful of peas rolled down the step.