“If we can train such hopeless cases,” said Miss Rachel. “Has nobody ever taught you how to behave?”
“Yes,” said Dick, growing red at the implication. “Auntie Helen is a lovely lady, and she taught us to be honourable and polite.”
“Oh, she did! and do you call it honourable to go off wading in your best clothes, while we were waiting for you to come here?”
Dick’s honest little face looked troubled.
“I don’t know,” he said, truly, but Dolly, who was often the quicker-witted of the two, spoke up:
“It may have been naughty, Aunt Rachel, but I don’t ’zackly think it was dishonourable. Do you?” Thus pinned down, Miss Rachel considered.
“Perhaps ‘dishonourable’ isn’t quite the right word,” she said, “but we won’t discuss that now. I shall teach you to behave properly, of course, but we won’t begin until you look like civilised beings, capable of being taught. Just now, I think hot baths, with plenty of soap, will be the best thing for you, but as you have no clean clothes, you’ll have to go to bed.”
“At five o’clock! Whew!” said Dick. “Oh, I say, Aunt Rachel, not to bed!”
“Anyway, let us go for a tear around the yard first,” begged Dolly. “We can’t hurt these clothes now; and I don’t believe the chickens will mind. Are there little chickens, Aunt Abbie?”
“Yes, little woolly yellow ones.”