"I guess," said Mabel, suddenly sitting up very straight and disclosing a puffy, tear-stained countenance that moved Marjory to fresh giggles, "if you'd felt those icy cold tomatoes go plump in your eye and every place on your very newest dress, you'd have been pretty mad, too. Look at me! I was too surprised to move after I'd hit Mr. Milligan—I never saw him coming at all—and I guess every tomato Laura threw hit me some place."
"Yes," confirmed Marjory, "I'll say that much for Laura. She can certainly throw straighter than any girl I ever knew—she throws just like a boy."
Jean, still worried and disapproving, could not help laughing, for Laura's plump target showed only too good evidence of Laura's skill. Mabel's new light-blue gingham showed a round scarlet spot where each juicy missile had landed; and besides this, there were wide muddy circles where her tears had left highwater marks about each eye.
"But, dear me," said Jean, growing sober again, "think how low-down and horrid it will sound when we tell about it at home. Suppose it should get into the papers! Apples and tomatoes! If boys had done it it would have sounded bad enough, but for girls to do such a thing! Oh, dear, I do wish I'd been here to stop it!"
"To stop the tomatoes, you mean," said Mabel. "You couldn't have stopped anything else, for I just had to do something or burst. I've felt all the week just like something sizzling in a bottle and waiting to have the cork pulled! I'll never be able to do my suffering in silence the way you and Bettie do. Oh, girls, I feel just loads better."
"Well, you may feel better," said irrepressible Marjory, "but you certainly look a lot worse. With those muddy rings on your face you look just like a little owl that isn't very wise."
"Oh, dear," mourned Bettie, "if Miss Blossom had only stayed we wouldn't have had all this trouble with those people."
"No," said Marjory, shrewdly, "Miss Blossom would probably have made Laura over into a very good imitation of an honest citizen. I don't think, though, that even Miss Blossom could make Laura anything more than an imitation, because—well, because she's Laura. It's different with Mabel—"
Mabel looked up expectantly, and Marjory, who was in a teasing mood, continued.
"Yes," said she, encouragingly, "Miss Blossom might have succeeded in making a nice, polite girl out of Mabel if she'd only had time—"