But this was going altogether too fast for me.
"How'll we get by Mrs. Muldoon? She's out there on the clothes-jack now."
"That'll be all right," Peter assured me; "if she says anything, just knock her down!"
But I could not imagine myself knocking Mrs. Muldoon down under any circumstances. In the first place, she weighed over two hundred pounds.
"An' say," continued Ed Mason, "how are we goin' to attack the house when we get there? What'll we do?"
Even Jimmy Toppan was wavering.
"Where are the murmidons? What'll we do if we meet them?" he asked.
Such questions were quite appropriate. We had long been accustomed to scout on Auntie Merrill, as well as other more formidable persons. We had tracked her up and down her garden many times, peered at her from behind bushes, and observed her from the tops of trees. But Peter, filled with a longing for military glory and daring deeds, was proposing an exploit altogether more hazardous than anything we had ever attempted. Thirsting for conquest, he overlooked all obstacles. He had, however, failed to infect us with his enthusiasm.
For one thing, this inhuman treatment of the damsels seemed rather foreign to Auntie Merrill's character, as I knew it. It was true she had spoken to me with severity on one occasion,—something about running across her new grass plot, and she had warned me against throwing stones at the statue of George Washington near her house. The latter warning had been totally unnecessary,—I had never dreamed of doing such a thing. I never had, that is, until she put the idea into my head,—after that it appealed to me with the fearful fascination of a deadly crime.