“Is that your new suit, Archie?” asked Mrs. Ward. “How well it fits!”
“Seems to me,” said Cricket, screwing up her face critically, “it sort of wrinkles across the shoulders,” patting his back patronisingly.
Archie wheeled around to a mirror hastily.
“Wrinkles, Miss Scricket! You ought to be wrinkled yourself! It fits like a—a house-afire,” he said indignantly, nearly twisting his neck off.
“And we all know how perfectly a house-afire fits,” observed Marjorie.
Cricket continued patting Archie’s back, and smoothing out imaginary wrinkles. By the time he had reached the doorway she had succeeded in what she was trying to do, for as he went out, after waving a light yellow hand patronisingly to the girls, there was pinned across his back a broad slip of paper with good-sized printed letters on it:
“I’m such a little boy; please to send me home early.”
“There!” remarked Cricket with much satisfaction, as the front door shut, “I think Archie will be pleased to have May Chester see that. I winked at Will—he won’t tell; and he helped him on with his overcoat very carefully. I peeked to see.”
“I’d like to see his face when he finds it out,” said Hilda.
“Oh, wouldn’t I!” cried Cricket fervently. “And, mamma, Archie can do anything he likes to me now—I won’t pay him off again. I’ll tell him so.”