"Oh, you make me sick," cried Carol. "Everybody does it."
"Carol Starr, if you say 'everybody does it' again I'll send you to bed," snapped Fairy. "Don't we know everybody does it? But Prudence isn't everybody."
"Maybe we'd better have a lunch," suggested their father hopefully, knowing the thought of food often aroused his family when all other means had failed. But his suggestion met with dark reproach.
"Father, if you're hungry, take a piece of bread out into the woodshed," begged Connie. "If anybody eats anything before me I shall jump up and down and scream."
Their father smiled faintly and gave it up. After that the silence was unbroken save once when Carol began encouragingly:
"Every—"
"Sure they do," interrupted Fairy uncompromisingly.
Long, long after that, when the girls' eyes were heavy, not with want of sleep, but just with unspeakable weariness of spirit,—they heard a step on the stair.
"Come on up, Harmer," the doctor called. And then, "Sure, she's all right. She's fine and dandy,—both of them are."