Eileen was stricken dumb, but Eveley took the writhing roaring boy from the porter’s hand, and dusted him lightly with her handkerchief.
“Why, where are your curls, Billy?” she demanded, hoping to distract his attention. And she succeeded only too well, for he stopped so suddenly in the midst of a loud wail that he almost choked. When he finally recovered his breath, he snorted derisively.
“Curls! Huh! I ain’t no girl. I ain’t got any curls. I never did have curls.”
“Oh, yes, you did,” she argued. “Two years ago you had beautiful, long golden curls just like Betty’s.”
Billy hunched up his shoulders and clenched a small brown fist.
“You got to say, ‘Excuse me for them words,’” he said belligerently. “Ain’t so, and you got to say it.”
Scenting battle, Eveley hastily muttered the desired words, and passed him over to Eileen.
Billy thrust out a sturdy hand, but to Eileen’s evident delight he refused to be kissed.
“Betty’s got to be whipped, Aunt Eileen,” he announced. “Aunt Agnes told me to tell you all she did on the train, and you would whip her. She stuck a pin in a fat man that was asleep,—that’s the man right there,—Say, didn’t Betty stick a pin in you?”
But the fat man gave them a venomous glare, and hurried away. “And she pulled the beads off of that blonde lady’s coat,—and if you don’t believe it, you can look in her pocket ’cause she’s got ’em yet. And she swiped a box of candy from that lady in the yellow suit, and the lady said the porter did it, and they had an awful fight. And she sang The Yanks Are Coming in the middle of the night and everybody swore something awful. And she wouldn’t eat anything but ice-cream at the table, and one meal she had five dishes.”