"You're not my lady; you're the other one."
"How do you know?"
"Well, I 'spect I couldn't jes tell, but then you are."
"I shouldn't wonder if you were right, but I want to tell you that you mustn't love Kittie so much; she's mine, and I'm jealous," said Kat, with a foreboding shake of her head.
"But she keeped the bear from eating me up," cried Pansy, with unshaken belief that she would have been forever lost except for Kittie's timely arrival. "I jes never'd seen my papa once any more, 'f she hadn't finded me in the woods; and he said I ought to love her jes as much more as ever I could, and I do," accompanying the assertion with a loving clasp of Kittie's arm, the suddenness of which sent her apple spinning across the floor.
"There, see; I'll get it," she cried, running after it, with a triumphant glance at Kat. "'F I'd knocked your apple, you'd a scolded me."
"Oh, no; I'm an angel," laughed Kat. "Kittie's the one that scolds."
"Do you?" asked Pansy, leaning against Kittie, with a devotion that nearly knocked the whole pan of apples over.
"I never scolded you, did I?" asked Kittie.
"No, but Auntie Raymond says I mind you the bestest of anybody. I think I do. I 'spect it's because I love you best, right up next to my papa; do you love me?"