Appearing to resent this, Robert cried the louder. “I am, too!” he wailed. “I bet I do die!”
“Nonsense!”
“I bet he does,” said the gloomy Daisy. “He is goin’ to die, Renfrew.”
Pessimism is useful sometimes, but this was not one of the times. When Robert heard Daisy thus again express her conviction, he gave forth an increased bellowing; and it was with difficulty that Renfrew got him to a hydrant in the side yard. Here, plaintively lowing, with his head down, Robert incarnadined Renfrew’s trousers at intervals, while the young man made a cold compress of a handkerchief and applied it to the swelling nose.
“If I—’f I—’f I die,” the patient blubbered, during this process, “they got to ketch that lull-little Lull-Laurence Coy and huh-hang him!”
“Nonsense!” said Renfrew. “Stand still; your nose isn’t even broken.”
“Well, my stummick is,” Daisy said, attending upon them and still in the semicircular attitude she had assumed for greater comfort. “I guess he broke that, if he never broke anything else, and whether he gets hung or not, I bet my mother’ll tell his mother she’s got to whip him, when she finds out.”
“When she finds out what?” Renfrew asked.
“When she finds out what he did to my stummick!”
“Pooh,” said Renfrew. “Both of you were teasing Laurence, and worrying him till he hardly knew what he was doing. Besides, there isn’t really anything to speak of the matter with either of you.”