“Then we’ll get them off the old tree at the bottom of the orchard, where they are just as big and yellow, and mamma will never know the difference.”
“But they taste like soap!”
“That doesn’t matter. She’d no more taste a magnum bonum, before it is all titivated up with sugar, than—than—than—”
“Babie’s head with brain sauce,” gravely put in Bobus, as his cousin paused for a comparison. “It’s a wasting of good gifts to make jam of these, for jam is nothing but a vehicle for sugar.”
“Then the grocer’s cart is jam,” promptly retorted Armine, “for I saw a sugarloaf come in one yesterday.”
“Come on, then,” cried Jock, ripe for the mischief; “I know the tree! They are just like long apricots. Aunt Ellen will think her plums have been all a-growing!”
“No, no, boys!” cried his mother, “I can’t have it done. To steal your aunt’s own plums to deceive her with!”
“We always may do as we like with that tree,” said Johnny, “because they are so nasty, and won’t keep.”
“How nice for the preserves!” observed Bobus.
“They would do just as well to hinder Mother Carey from catching it.”