“Oh! The loveliest thing in the world!” cried Molly, clapping her hands.
“Thank you,” said Dolly, demurely, lifting her face for the other to kiss.
“Oh! not you, Miss Vanity, but a beautiful thing on four legs!”
“We’re to take our choice and the white one’s mine, for—” declared Alfaretta.
“No white one for me! Dad says we’re to do our own grooming and white ones have to be washed just like a poodle dog and—” began Leslie.
“I had one once. His name was ‘Goodenough,’ and he was good enough, too. Could walk on its hind legs—” interrupted Herbert.
“Oh, Dorothy! If you aren’t going to finish that buttered toast, do give it to me! I never was so hungry in all my life. I simply can’t get filled up, and—”
“Montmorency Vavasour-Stark! You ought to be ashamed! After eating four chops, three boiled eggs, five helpings of potato, to say nothing of coffee enough for the regiment, and strawberries—”
“Well, Mistress Molly Breckenridge, I don’t know who set you to keep tally on my appetite! and I hate to see good things wasted. Want the rest of those berries, girlie? I know you don’t. You’re real unselfish, you are; and you wouldn’t eat all the nice-ripe-red-strawberries-raised-under-glass-ripe-red-strawberries and give your neighbor none. And give your neighbor none, you-shan’t-have-any-of-my-nice-ripe-red-strawberries-who-gives-his-neighbor—Molly, give it back! Aw, now, Molly! You wouldn’t eat all the nice-ripe—Hold on! Bert Montaigne, that’s a beastly shame! After I had to warble in that dulcet way for a plate of poor, left-over, second-hand strawberries, to have ’em grabbed by you and Molly—that’s too much. Just one drop too much to fill my bucket, but I say, ‘Little One,’ I wish you’d get up late every morning, and have just such a superfine breakfast as this saved for you, and not be hungry at all yourself, but save it for a poor starved little boy who hasn’t had a mouthful in an hour—”
Monty was running on in this absurd way, yet holding his own in a three cornered scramble for possession of a dish of berries he had pre-empted from Dorothy’s table; till, without saying anything, Helena calmly walked up, took the disputed dish from the contestants and, shoving Dolly aside to give up half her chair, sat down and began to eat them herself.