The children had lately picked up the words [47] ]“crisis,” “relapse,” and “convalescent,” and their application of them was a trifle amusing. Jennie was subject to as many as seven “relapses” in one day, while the “crisis” of hers and Suey’s various complaints occurred as often as three times in a morning. If you met a doll wrapped up to its eyes, being slowly wheeled up and down the drive, you would know the “convalescent” stage was reached.
“Now, my Weenie one,” said the mother, after a wise little talk on the wrongfulness of saying “demon” in one’s throat.
Weenie untucked herself deliberately.
“I took the biggest piece of cake to-night,” she said, “but if I hadn’t took it, Phyl would, or Dolly; then they would have been greedy ’stead.”
“That’s one,” said Mrs. Conway.
“There was lots and crowds of tarts in the pantry on Sursday, ’bout thirty hundred,—I only took one.”
“That’s two,” said the mother, adding one more finger to the hand she was holding up to number the crimes.
Weenie looked carefully away from the elder sisters while she confessed the next item.
“On Wesenday I gave Jennie and Suey a frashing,” she said. “Well, Phyl and Dolly should have played with me—serves them right.”
Phyl and Dolly sprang to their feet, a wrathful scarlet rushing into their faces; this was the first intimation they had had that the bodies of their [48] ]darlings had been so maltreated, and they looked as if they could have fallen on the offender and “frashed” her in retaliation.