"It is so absurd in Roy," said Helen Hastings, "to want me not to visit Maizie, whom I love so dearly, just because one of her family has beaten him at baseball and shot more pigeons this spring."
"And Helen shall come to tea as often as she likes to put up with our plain fare," declared little Miss Duckworth, "even if Carl does look like a thunder-cloud all supper time and has hardly enough politeness to pass the butter."
So matters stood when, one evening in early June, the commander of the heights' coterie summoned his followers to a meeting in the loft of an old barn on his father's estate, that was only used as a storehouse since a better one had been built.
"Hello, fellows, what is this pow-wow about?" asked agile Mark Tripp, as he sprang up a rickety ladder and popped his head through the square opening in the attic floor.
"Dun'no; some bee, Duckworth, here, has buzzing round in his bonnet," replied lazy Hugh Blossom from the hay, where he reclined. "It takes the captain to have 'happy thoughts,'" while, playfully pulling a refractory lock of hair sticking out from Carl's head, he gaily chanted:
"And the duck with the feather curled over his back,
He leads all the others, with his quack! quack! quack!"
"Good enough! All right, Ducky, proceed with your quacking! Let's know what's up! Are the 'low-ly lil-is of the val-ly' once more on the war path? And to what do they challenge us—a spelling match or a swimming race?"
"To neither. Those very superior posies are about to seek glory in another way. I have learned from a most reliable source that they are now hoarding all their pocket money in order to astonish the natives. In fact, fellers, they intend to fresco Valleytown a decided carmine on the 'Glorious Fourth,' and we have got to make the hills hum to quench 'em."