“You’ve got an awful tongue, Susan. We’ll call you Sassy Susan,” said Will, laughing at his own joke.
“Oh, it isn’t my tongue you’re afraid of now. You know I can tell on you. I saw you drive your cow into the stable last week. You were ashamed to milk outside, but you looked all around——”
“I didn’t do it. How could you see? It was dark,” and Will giggled foolishly, seeing all at once that he had betrayed himself.
“It was nearly dark, but I happened to be where I could see. And as I was coming back, a few minutes after, I saw you come out with a pail of milk, and look around you like a sneak-thief. You saw me and hurried away. You are such a coward that you are ashamed to do a little honest work. Milkmaid! Girl-boy! Coward! And Pewee Rose lets you lead him around by the nose!”
“You’d better be careful what you say, Susan,” said Pewee, threateningly.
“You won’t touch me. You go about bullying little boys, and calling yourself King Pewee, but you can’t do a sum in long division, nor in short subtraction, for that matter, and you let fellows like Riley make a fool of you. Your father’s poor, and your mother can’t keep a girl, and you ought to be ashamed to let her milk the cows. Who milked your cow this morning, Pewee?”
“I don’t know,” said the king, looking like the king’s fool.
“You did it,” said Susan. “Don’t deny it. Then you come here and call a strange boy a milkmaid!”
“Well, I didn’t milk in the street, anyway, and he did.” At this, all laughed aloud, and Susan’s victory was complete. She only said, with a pretty toss of her head, as she turned away: “King Milkmaid!”
Pewee found the nickname likely to stick. He was obliged to declare on the playground the next day, that he would “thrash” any boy that said anything about milkmaids. After that, he heard no more of it. But one morning he found “King Milkmaid” written on the door of his father’s cow-stable. Some boy who dared not attack Pewee, had vented his irritation by writing the hateful words on the stable, and on the fence-corners near the school-house, and even on the blackboard.