"John Thomas Hennesy!" she exclaimed. "How you frightened me! What are you doing out here at this time of night?"
John Thomas wiped the honest drops of toil from his brow and regarded her sickle suspiciously. "I'm cutting weeds. I've cut our own and now I'm cutting Canary's. What are you going to do, I'd like to know?"
"I'm going to cut Mr. Schultzsky's," said Miss Billy, in a gay stage whisper. "No,—not a word, John Thomas,—I want the satisfaction of laying those weeds low myself."
"Well if she ain't a reg'lar brick!" said John Thomas admiringly, as the swish of her sickle came across the street to his ears. "Catch Mary Jane taking a sickle in her lily white hand to——"
The rest of his sentence was lost in the sound of his own sickle as it played dexterously among the O'Brien weeds.
There were other ears than John Thomas's on which fell the swish of Miss Billy's keen blade that night. Two eyes peered down from an open window of the Schultzsky house on a girl kneeling in the very dooryard. A girl who might have been mistaken for a saving angel with the moonlight on her wavy hair and flowing gown. A girl who attacked the weeds in a very fury of resentment, and scattered their rank growth in every direction. The eyes peered and peered, and then withdrew,—but gave no sign.
It was ten o'clock the next morning when Miss Billy came sleepily down to her breakfast. Theodore met her with suspicion lurking in his eye, but sang carelessly:
“The lark is up to meet the sun,—
The bee is on the wing:
The ant its labours has begun——
"Say Sis, who cut all those weeds last night?"