“Anyway,” said Mamie, changing the subject, but with a sudden purpose of revenge for that spanking coming into her mind, “your own pa said just so. He and pa was a talkin’ by the gate, an’ pa, he said, ‘wish you’d hev them girls keep out of the barnyard, for they’re allers a-junketin’ round.’ Them’s his very words. An’ yer pa, he said, ‘I’ll tell ’em if I see ’em, but like as not I won’t’; ’n’ my pa, he said, ‘Mamie, go and tell ’em straight off this minute, that I say keep out of the barnyard;’ so I come, ’cause my pa an’ your pa, they said to, both on ’em.”
“For goodness sake, Mamie, go away with your ‘pa’s,’” said Cricket, impatiently. “You do make me so cross. I don’t believe a word of it. ’Gustus never in his life told us to keep out of the barn.” Long experience with Mamie made the girls slow to believe anything she stated for a fact.
“He said so this time, anyway,” repeated Mamie, much enjoying the girls’ anger, as she fired stones into the brook to make a splash. “He said he was a-waitin’ round to warn yer off.” Then she thought, “I won’t tell ’em the reason why, at all, hateful old things, ’n’ then they’ll be sorry.”
It must be remembered that rude as Cricket and Eunice now certainly were to the child, it was only that a long time of bearing Mamie’s teasing, provoking ways had brought them to speaking to her as they did. They scorned to tell tales, and the elders had no idea how tormenting Mamie always was. “Worse than skeeters,” Cricket said.
Mamie knew precisely the effect that her words would probably have. Without doubt, the girls would go to the barns sometime that day, and if they should get hooked—just a little—by that cross old cow, wouldn’t they be well paid up for spanking her that day. Of course it wouldn’t be her fault, for she had told them to keep away.
“You’ve got to keep out of our ba-arn! You’ve got to keep out of our ba-arn!” she repeated, in a sing-song voice, firing a particularly big stone into the water, having aimed it with great care close to where Eunice was sitting. The water splashed up, spattering her well.
“You mean little thing!” Eunice cried, springing up in a fury. Mamie had already darted away, and was flying across the meadows like a little brown spider. She rolled under the fence just as Eunice was upon her.
“You dassent tetch me now!” she gasped, panting for breath. “I’m on my pa’s land.”
“Lucky for you,” said Eunice, wrathfully. “If you come over here again I’ll take you up to my father, if Cricket and I have to drag you every step of the way. Now mind!”
“Oh, dear, very smart you are!” jeered Mamie, safe on her side of the fence. “I expect you’d like to tear me into limbs. But you’ll be sorry if you don’t keep out of my pa’s barns,” she added, edging off.