"Why don't Craw have to take his turn washin' dishes?" inquired Judith, who was still nettled from the recent argument.
"Craw's a boy. Boys don't wash dishes," adjudged Luella in a tone of dead finality.
"I don't see why he hadn't otta," continued Judith, as she slapped the plates together. "Far's I c'n see he ain't no good fer nuthin else."
The subject of this conversation, engaged in his favorite occupation of doing nothing in a rocking chair by the stove, looked at his sisters with a mild, impartial eye and said nothing. He was safe and aloof in his masculinity.
"Land, hain't that a nice pattern this platter is burned into, Elly!" exclaimed Judith, examining a small platter which she had just picked up from the table. "Look here at all the nice squares an' di'monds—an' all jes as even!"
"I don't see nothing nice about it," said Luella with a half glance at the platter. "It's burned so's it won't never come white agin. It was you done that, Judy, puttin' it in the oven with them slices o' hog meat on it an' fergittin it till the grease was all burnt into smoke. An' sech a stink as it made when mammy opened the oven door! A person could hardly git their breath."
"Well, I like it anyway," said Judith cheerfully. "It's a good thing somebody likes these old, cracked-over plates, cuz most all of 'em is cracked over. I have lots o' fun lookin' at 'em an' seein' all the diff'rent patterns they git burnt into."
"Yes, an' that's why it takes you so long to wash up the dishes. If you don't hurry you're a-goin' to be tardy for school. The rest of us is a-fixin' to start naow, an' you'll have to run to ketch up."
"I ain't a-goin' to ketch up if I don't want to," returned Judith. "An' if I'm tardy, you hain't got no call to be a-frettin' yo'se'f."
This sort of bickering between Judith and her sisters went on daily in the Pippinger home and increased as the children grew older. Luella and Lizzie May, good, right-minded, docile little girls, looked down upon Judith from the height of two whole years of seniority and felt it their duty to try to make her as good, right-minded and docile as themselves.