“And risk my life doing it!” cried Linda. “I shall tell my father.”
“If you tell your father everything you promise to,” said Walter, with some spirit, “he must be an awfully busy man just attending to your complaints.”
“Oh, my!” gasped Bess, with wan delight. Meek Walter Mason was beginning to show boldness in dealing with the purse-proud girl.
“You’re a nasty thing!” snapped Linda to Walter. “And I don’t like you.”
“I’ll get over that,” muttered the boy to himself.
“And your sister is just as bad!” scolded Linda, giving way to her dreadful temper as Nan and Bess had seen her do on the train. “I’ll show you both that you can’t treat me in any such way. I’ve always stood up for your dunce of a sister. That’s what she is, a dunce!”
“If you were a boy, I’d thrash you for saying that!” declared Walter, quietly, though in a white heat of passion himself.
“Oh! oh!” shrieked Linda. “So you threaten to strike me, do you? If I tell my father that——”
“Oh, tell him!” exclaimed Walter, in exasperation.
“Of all the mean girls!” murmured Bess, with her arm about Grace, who was crying softly and begging her brother to desist.