Tilly flushed a little.
"I didn't find anything."
"Why, Tilly Mack!" cried a chorus of condemning voices.
"Well, I didn't," defended Tilly. "In the first place I've told everything I can think of: trees, fruits, history, and everything; and this morning I just had to go to Mrs. Miller's for a fitting."
"Oh, Tilly, another new dress?" demanded Elsie Martin, her voice a pathetic wail of wistfulness.
"But there are still so many things," argued Cordelia, her grave eyes fixed on Tilly, "so many things to learn that—" She was interrupted by an eager little voice from the outskirts.
"I've got something, please, Cordelia. Mayn't I tell it? It's a brand-newest thing. Nobody's said it once!"
Cordelia turned to confront her ten-year-old cousin, Edith.
"Why, Edith!"
"And I have, too," piped up Edith's brother, Fred, with shrill earnestness. (Fred was eight.) "And mine's new, too."