“We talk in bed about the fun we used to have in the orchard till we nearly cry. Don’t we, Eff?”
“Rather,” said Effie, mournfully, “but now we’ll be able to come, ’cause we’ll all have whooping cough, too. Frank and Ted and Nellie all say they’d rather have it than stop away from ‘Greenways’ any longer.”
Up through the ferns came the thin note of Miss Bibby’s cooee.
“Coo-ee-ee,” shouted Pauline instantly in return. Then looked a little troubled, for cooee was to be interpreted that all was well.
“At all events it’s not our fault,” she said resignedly.
A stout figure of vengeance was indeed coming along the path in the shape of Uncle Hugh.
Tiny Nellie Gowan who could never keep a secret ten minutes had suddenly revealed the horrifying fact that “Effie and Florence were [p252] going to run and run till they catched the whooping cough and all could go to Muffie’s house again.”
So Hugh had followed in their wake promptly enough, but then he was stout, while they were slim, and the race was consequently not to him.
He drove Paul and Lynn downwards with threats of dry bread and spring water for lunch. And he bore his nieces, who cheerfully exculpated their friends from blame, back to the tables at the foot of the first Fall, where Kate and the others were beginning to spread the lunch.
And here nothing in the shape of wrath and reproaches and argument could shake them from the position behind which they had entrenched themselves, namely that since the coughing would have to be done by themselves it mattered nothing to anybody if the affliction came upon them.