She hesitated a moment, perhaps her brother's derisive laugh helped to her action: she put it right there.
"There's one thing about this affair—having long been an acute sufferer from my headstrong sister's temper," said Dick, grinning all over his face—"about which I am distinctly displeased."
"You are going to make one of your terrible jokes, Dick!" she said. "I can see it in your face!"
"Oh, let him run loose," interposed Masters. "It's Christmas time, you know. What's the joke? If it's going to give us pain, out with it—as the boy said to the dentist."
"If you labour over one of your usual atrocious puns, Dick," warned his sister, "I'll throw you down and pummel you black and blue!"
"I was merely going to observe," said her brother, regardless of the threat, "that I was glad that at length you had found your master!"
He had to howl for mercy before she let him go.