"If they're any funnier than girls, I'll eat my boots," said Archie, firing green apples at a mark. "Girls are so finicky. There's Edna, squeals if you touch her. If I give her hair just one little yank, you would think I'd pulled her scalp off. If I give Will a good punch"—illustrating with a resounding whack—"he doesn't squeal."
"No, but he hits back," said Cricket, laughing, as Will levelled Archie, by a vigorous thump. "If Edna should hit you a few times like that, you wouldn't tease her so."
"And she's always so careful of her clothes," went on Archie, ignoring this point; "can't do this, because she'll spoil her apron, can't do that, because she'll muss her hair."
"Boys ar'n't talked to about their clothes as girls are," said Cricket, with a sigh. "If you just heard 'Liza talk when we tear our clothes! She has to mend them. Wouldn't I be happy if I could go around all the time in my gymnasium suit. I feel so light and airy."
"And girls are so affected," pursued Archie. "You wouldn't walk with us yesterday coming home from church, and why not? 'Cause you had your best bonnet on, and you carried your head too high. So affected!"
"It wasn't affectedness, it was got-to-do-it-ness," said Cricket, stoutly. "If you had to go to church with a great, big, flappy, floppy hat on, that joggled your ears all the time, 'cause the roses were so heavy, and if you had to be careful to keep your pink organdie clean for next Sunday, and if you had a teasy cousin, who, likely as not, would take hold of your arm, and crunch your sleeves all down, most probably you'd have walked all by yourself, too, and tried to keep yourself respectable so 'Liza wouldn't scold. But you're a boy," finished Cricket, with a burst of envy, "and so you don't bother about clothes. And, anyway, boys will never admit they're to blame about anything," returning suddenly to the original charge.
"Because they never are, of course," answered Archie, turning a back somersault. "It's always somebody else's fault."
"Did you hear auntie tell that funny story about Archie, last night, Will?" asked Cricket.
"Funny story about me, miss? There never was any funny story about me."
"This was a little bit funny, anyway. Auntie said you weren't but three years old, and she was visiting with you, at Kayuna. It was early one morning, before breakfast, and the piazza had just been washed up, and wasn't dry yet. Papa was reading a newspaper, and you were running up and down the piazza, showing off."