“What is it, Paula?” demanded Octave. “You look as if you had been taking a dose of castor oil.”
“Hateful boy!” said Paula.
“Who?”
“That Melville Capers. He’s as horrid as—”
“As a boy. You can’t compare him to anything worse,” laughed the younger girl.
“All boys cannot be like him, or grown-up folks wouldn’t endure them. They’d imprison them somewhere till they learned decency. I shall have nothing more to do with him!”
“Why, Paula! Lose all the honor of reconstructing him? You, the head of the family? What did he do or say? What are you mad at?”
“I’m not mad. It is an unladylike word.”
“Pooh! You’re as mad as a March hare, or a hornet, or a bear with a so—”
“Octave Pickel! I should think you would be ashamed of yourself! A young lady fourteen years old using such coarse expressions!”