“You could spit it out,” said Muffie eagerly, “like when they gave me the castor-oil; and it was the last in the bottle, so they couldn’t give me any more.”
“But there are gallons more in my bottle,” Lynn said dolefully, “and you heard what she said about putting it down my back.”
“Look here,” said Pauline, the judicial look of her father in her eyes, “that’s just talk about putting it down our backs. I thought it all out that day Muffie ate the green peach. You know Miss Bibby said then she’d put it down her back—the castor-oil, you know. Well, if I’d been Muffie I’d just have said, ‘All right, do.’ Do you think they would have done so, and got her clothes [p119] all nasty and greasy? Not they, they think far too much of clothes. But even if they had—well, it might have been a bit sticky, but it would be better than taking stuff like that down your mouth.”
This was marvellous perspicacity of thought; Lynn looked admiringly down at her sister, and Muffie stood, with her mouth open, digesting this freshly-minted fact, and making clear resolutions for all future consequences of green peaches.
They fell to playing again, Lynn remaining in the tree, however. Mrs. Robinson now engaged in sewing skin coats with a porcupine needle and flax, since the more active part of Fritz, shooting and shouting down below, was fraught with too much danger.
“I can’t make Tentholm, ’less I have the diny-room tablecloth,” said Muffie.
“Well, go and get it,” said Pauline.
“All right,” said Muffie, making a line for it, then calling back, just as a little sop to duty, “she said we weren’t to, though.”
“Run up and ask her,” said Lynn, a law-abiding little person so long as the iron did not enter her soul or body.
Muffie dashed into Miss Bibby’s bedroom after the briefest knock, and made her request.