"Joy can ride Billy. There isn't a cow in Yorkbury safer."
Mrs. Breynton sipped her tea and thought about it.
"I want to go horsebacking, too," put in Winnie, glaring savagely at Gypsy over his bread and milk. "I'm five years old."
"And jerked six whole buttons off your jacket this very day," said Gypsy, eyeing certain gaps of which there were always more or less to be seen in Winnie's attire in spite of his mother's care. "A boy who jerks buttons like that couldn't go 'horsebacking.' You wouldn't have one left by the time you came home,—look out, you'll have your milk over. You tipped it over times enough this morning for one day."
"You will have your milk over; don't stand the mug up on the napkin-ring,—no, nor on that crust of bread, either," repeated his mother, and everybody looked up anxiously, and edged away a little from Winnie's immediate vicinity. This young gentleman had a pleasing little custom of deluging the united family at meal-time, at least once regularly every day, with milk and bread-crumbs; maternal and paternal injunctions, threats, and punishments notwithstanding, he contrived every day some perfectly novel, ingenious, and totally unexpected method of accomplishing the same; uniting, in his efforts, the strategy of a Napoleon, with the unruffled composure of a Grant.
"I don't know but what I'll see what father thinks about it," Mrs. Breynton went on, thoughtfully. "If he should be willing—"
"Good, good!" cried Gypsy, clapping her hands. "Father's in the library. Winnie, you run up and ask him if we can't go up Rattlesnake."
"Well," said Winnie, "when I just get through eatin'. I'm goin' to make him let me horseback as much as you or anybody else."
Winnie finished his toast with imperturbable deliberation, pushed back his chair, and jumped up.