"A dancing bear, with a great big little monkey on its back," Madget offered in corroboration.
"I don't like jokes," Mabel said. "I ain't agoing to have her make 'em. I'd rather talk about what I had to eat, and I can't if Moses and the baby won't give me any chance to."
"I'll tell you what you do," Peggy said, "you run home and tell your marmer and your parper all about it. The one that gets there first can talk the most, you know. Now we'll go and tell Grandmummy," she added, as the children took to their heels.
"I wonder what she'll say," Elizabeth mused. "She always says something that you don't quite expect, but that somehow settles things."
What she did say, after listening to the complete recital of the affair with an almost suspiciously long face, was merely:
"There's a great satisfaction in undertaking a thing and going straight through to the end, no matter how it comes out. What's worth doing is worth doing well, and I was real proud of the way you two girls stuck it out."
"Well, that's something," Peggy said to Elizabeth, "but deep down in the bottom of her soul, she's laughing at us, just the same."
"She's laughing at us—some," Elizabeth acknowledged.