"I can rhyme," cried Mabel, springing to her feet and giving vent to all her grievances at once. "My table manners are good. I'm not fat. I've got just as much waist as you have."
"You've got more," shrieked delighted Laura.
Faithless Marjory, struck by this indubitable truth, laughed outright.
"You—you can't make Indian-bead chains," sputtered Mabel, trying hard to find something crushing to say. "You can't make pancakes. You can't drive nails."
"Yah," retorted Laura, who was right in her element, "you can't throw straight."
"Neither can you."
"I can! If I could find anything to throw I'd prove it."
Just at this unfortunate moment, a grocery-man arrived at the Milligan house with a basketful of beautiful scarlet tomatoes. In another second, Laura, anxious to prove her ability, had jumped from the fence, seized the basket and, with unerring aim, was delightedly pelting her astonished enemy with the gorgeous fruit. Mabel caught one full in the chest, and as she turned to flee, another landed square in the middle of her light-blue gingham back; Marjory's shoulder stopped a third before the girls retreated to the house, leaving Laura, a picturesque figure on the high post, shouting derisively:
"Proved it, didn't I? Ki! I proved it."
Marjory, pleading that discretion was the better part of valor, begged Mabel to stay indoors; but Mabel, who had received, and undoubtedly deserved, the worst of the encounter, was for instant revenge. Rushing to the kitchen she seized the pan of hard little green apples that Grandma Pike had bequeathed the girls and flew with them to the porch.