"Well, try it, anyway," said Tom; "for I like that kind of a gravy first rate."
"Oh, it just makes me laugh to hear boys talk about cooking," exclaimed Kate. "They do have such droll ideas!"
"Well, I know what I like," said Tom; "and I wouldn't give much for a girl that cannot make a gravy."
"Oh, the nice, agreeable boy! So he should have his gravy on his partridge," teased Kate.
"I've too much regard for the reputation of our family to quarrel with my sister before folks," laughed Thomas. "She's an awful provoking thing, though!"
"Oh, the dear boy!" retorted Kate.
"Somebody give me some cold water to hold in my mouth," groaned Tom. "She must have the last word, anyway."
That was quite a common kind of encounter between Tom and his sister Kate; yet I never saw brother and sister more attached to each other. Only about a year and a half younger than her brother, Kate was a match for him in about everything and rather more than a match in repartee.
Meantime Theodora was toasting some squares of bread to put in the partridge fricassee, and looking about for a dish to manufacture Tom's butter and meal gravy in.
There was a copse of little firs, standing about a low, wet piece of ground, a few hundred feet away. To these we had recourse for the material to fill the bunks.