"Edna, it's easy to see your great-grandfather was a Scotchman," said Mrs. Somers, when she could speak for laughing at her very practical little daughter.
"Why, I don't see what that has to do with it. People laugh at such silly things, mamma. Eunice and Cricket just double up over some things that are too stupid for anything."
"That's your misfortune, dear. If there was a School of Jokes I should certainly send you to it."
"Well, for instance," went on Edna, "I'll leave it to Hilda if this wasn't silly. That day when we all walked over to Captain's Hill, we all sat down on some stones to rest. Nobody happened to be saying anything just then, and Cricket began to sing. Archie listened a moment, then he jumped up and started off on a run, as fast as he could go, all around the top of the hill, and came back all puffing and panting, and he said: 'Cricket, I've run all around the hill, and I can't catch that tune.' The girls thought it was awfully funny; what, do you think it was funny, too?" for Hilda went off in a peal of laughter, as well as auntie.
"Of course," went on Edna, "he couldn't tell the tune if he didn't stay and listen to it; and, perhaps, he wouldn't have known then," she added, thoughtfully.
Cricket grew very red, as she always did when any slighting allusion was made to her singing.
"Archie is a very funny boy, I think," she remarked quickly, to turn the attention of the others from this sore subject. "He isn't as nice as Will, but he's generally funnier. He gets so mad when Edna says, 'What's the sense to that?' when he makes a joke."
"Like yesterday, Mrs. Somers," said Hilda, "when Archie asked us a conundrum, 'How does a sculptor die?' do you know it? The answer is, 'He makes faces and busts.' And he got so mad when Edna only told him that busts wasn't correct. He ought to say, 'He makes faces and bursts.'"
"Well, he ought, oughtn't he, mamma? Nobody says busts."
"Edna, you're hopeless," answered her mother. "And here we are at home again."