The voices waxed more angry, and they heard Bertha declare, “You’re a horrid old telltale! Go on and tell, if you want to, and I’ll tell what you stole out of father’s desk last week!”
“How did you know that?” and Winthrop’s voice rang out in rage.
“Oh, I know all about it. You think nobody knows anything but yourself, Smarty-cat! Just wait till I tell father and see what he’ll do to you.”
“You won’t tell him! Promise me you won’t, or I’ll,—I’ll hit you! There, take that!”
“That” seemed to be a resounding blow, and immediately Bertha’s cries broke forth in angry profusion.
“Stop crying,” yelled her brother, “and stop punching me. Stop it, I say!”
At this point the conversation broke off suddenly, and Patty and Roger stared in stupefied amazement as they saw Bertha and Winthrop walk in smiling, and hand in hand, from exactly the opposite direction from which their quarrelsome voices had sounded.
“What’s the matter?” said Bertha. “Why do you look so shocked and scared to death?”
“N-nothing,” stammered Patty; while Roger blurted out, “We thought we heard you talking over that way, and then you came in from this way. Who could it have been? The voices were just like yours.”
Bertha and Winthrop broke into a merry laugh.