No wonder Five Oaks awoke to a new existence! The wide-spreading lawns knew now what it was to be pressed by a dozen little scampering feet at once: and the great stone lions knew what it was to have two yelling boys mount their carven backs, and try to dig sharp little heels into their stone sides. Within the house, the attic, sacred for years to cobwebs and musty memories, knew what it was to yield its treasured bonnets, shawls, and quilted skirts to a swarm of noisy children who demanded them for charades.
Tom, Peter, Mary, Patty, Arabella, and Clarabella had been at Five Oaks two weeks when one day Bobby McGinnis found Margaret crying all alone in the old summerhouse down in the garden.
“Gorry, what’s up?” he questioned; adding cheerily: “‘Soldiers’ daughters don’t cry’!”—it was a quotation from Margaret’s own childhood’s creed, and one which in the old days seldom failed to dry her tears. Even now it was not without its effect, for her head came up with a jerk.
“I—I know it,” she sobbed; “and I ain’t—I mean, I are not going to. There, you see,” she broke off miserably, falling back into her old despondent attitude. “‘Ain’t’ should be ‘are not’ always, and I never can remember.”
“Pooh! Is that all?” laughed Bobby. “‘Twould take more’n a ‘are not’ ter make me cry.”
“But that ain’t all,” wailed Margaret, and she did not notice that at one of her words Bobby chuckled and parted his lips only to close them again with a snap. “There’s heaps more of ’em; ‘bully’ and ‘bang-up’ and ‘gee’ and ‘drownded’ and ‘g’ on the ends of things, and—well, almost everything I say, seems so.”
“Well, what of it? You’ll get over it. You’re a-learnin’ all the time; ain’t ye?”
“‘Are not you,’ Bobby,” sighed Margaret.
“Well, ‘are not you,’ then,” snapped Bobby.
Margaret shook her head. A look that was almost terror came to her eyes. She leaned forward and clutched the boy’s arm.