"But Joe isn't Jennie," objected Bingo, as Gavin chanted the last line of this lyric in a cheerful jigging sing-song, and a voice that would have done credit to a cathedral choir.
"And Mums wanted me to get shoe-laces," Joey added. "You see, these haven't any tags, and the ends are all frayed out."
"What's wrong with stiffening up the ends with Bingo's play-wax?" demanded Gavin the resourceful. "I never thought that you'd come to spending the one penny going on silly shoe-laces, when we have to go to Luckie Jean's odd-and-end shop, and might have bought bull's-eyes, or at least pear-drops."
Joey cast a glance down at the very dilapidated laces securing her shabby shoes. Her indifference to her own personal appearance was supreme, but Mums had seemed worried about those shoe-laces, and it was a point of honour in the Graham family to protect Mums from all possible worries. All the same she agreed with Gavin: it was a waste to be going all the way to Crumach and Luckie Jean's odd-and-end shop without so much as a penny to spend among the five of them—Gavin, Ronnie, Kirsty, Bingo, and herself. She considered the question.
"But Joey isn't Jennie!" objected Bingo once more with determination. Bingo never left a question till he got an answer; even when Gavin smacked his head for bothering, which happened now and then. Father—the big, cheery father to whom the five had said their last good-bye one chilly morning close on two years ago at Crumach Station—had called Bingo "the little bull-pup," because you couldn't make him let go.
Gavin knew that, and answered the objection. "Why, you little ass, Joey won't rhyme with anything, that's all, and Jocelyn's even worse. And of course anyone can see who's meant, because Joey's the only one of us who has so much as a brass farthing to bless herself with."
"And she's going to spend all her farthings on boot-laces," observed Bingo sorrowfully, and the corners of his mouth went down. Bingo was only six; that was his excuse—and he was the only member of the Graham family who had been known to cry for years. They hadn't got a tear out of Gavin when he fell off a hayrick and dislocated his shoulder, and it was put back by the local bone-setter—a process which is far from pleasant when unaccompanied by chloroform. Joey hastened to avert the tragedy which might have disgraced the name of Graham if Bingo were left in suspense too long.
"If you're sure that play-wax will fix up my lace-ends so that Mums won't worry, we'll use the penny on anything you like," she said.
Her words produced quite a sensation. Gavin patted her violently on the back; Kirsty jumped three times into the air like a young chamois, with a great display of long, thin, scratched legs—no one in those parts ever saw anything like the way those Graham children grew!—and Bingo hugged her ecstatically before burrowing in the pocket of his tiny knickers for a small and grubby piece of yellow play-wax.
They all sat down on the high heathery moor to mend the laces there and then. "Lots of time," Gavin pronounced, consulting the gold hunting-watch which Father had said his eldest boy was to have if he never came back. "The postman never gets to Crumach till four, and it's not three."