"Stole my ribbon, the little——"
"Eh, eh! Stole is a big word for young lips," interrupted the man, while the accused protested,
"I didn't neither! I was just lookin' at it to see if 'twould match my new dress a lady guv me."
"Oh, looking!" was Rufie's sneering rejoinder. "Where is it now? Didn't I see you tuck it in your pocket, you thief o' the——"
"Sh—h! That's not nice talk for a pretty gal like you, Rufie. Don't call names like a hoodlum. Where's the ribbon, Tilly?"
"There, you old stingy!" bringing it forth with a flirt, to slap it across her sister's face, at which the later snatched it eagerly with a few choice epithets, which flowed as easily from her young lips as if she had been ages old in sin.
Nate looked from one to the other, and the amused smile died out of his face.
"I don't like you when you're that way, girls," he said in a hopeless tone. "See how you worry sister!" for Lucy was calling fretfully,
"I do wish you two could be still one second! Tommy was asleep, and baby almost, when you began screeching like a fire engine and racing and slamming through the house—where's pa, Nate?"
"Pa? Oh, he—he's around uptown some'ers."