Kate tarried to wheedle the enemy a bit, and, that failing, gave it as her opinion that boys ought never to have been created. Departing she closed the door with more force than was strictly needful, and left Phil alone.
That individual worked on in an injured and gloomy frame of mind.
“Mean enough in them to be forever nagging me. Mean enough in me not to get their skates and music.”
It was hard for Phil to decide which was the greater wretch, himself or Kate. Rosabel, he concluded, could never be a “blot on the earth,” whatever she did. It was Rosabel who had helped him write his composition on “Spring;” it was Rosabel who knit his mittens; it was Rosabel who never shirked her share of the stirring when they made molasses candy.
The remembrance of Rosabel’s virtues haunted Phil even after “Chain Lightning” was in order, and he was shooting down “Sullivan Hill,” lying prone on his sled, with his legs waving in the air.
Perhaps that was the reason that when his elder brother Will came hastily up the hill and offered him five cents if he would carry a bundle to a store next the railway station (you see that Phil was regarded as the family errand boy), he condescended to saunter in that direction. Not that he cared for the pennies, although he accepted them as a token of brotherly esteem.
He even quickened his pace as a shrill whistle sounded in the distance, and ended by racing up to the depot just as the twelve-o’clock train stopped.
No one seemed to know about Rosabel’s skates.
“Ask the man in the express office—perhaps they came on an earlier train,” suggested Fred Rodman, who was standing on the platform. “I’ll keep your sled for you. Or, see here, just slip the rope through this iron ring on the rear car.”
Phil did as he was bidden, and leaving his sharp-shooter tied with a slip-knot, went into the express office.