"I'll give you a whole lot of my candy, Annie," said the boy earnestly, "if you'll tell mother I was awful good. Will you?"
"'Awful' it was, all right," giggled Annie; "but if I was to say you was good I'd have to burn in purgatory for me sins. I'll say nothin'."
"Where's purgatory, Annie?" inquired the young person after a thoughtful silence.
"It's a warrum place entirely where you'll find yourself some day, I'm thinkin', if yez meddle too much in my kitchen," said Annie darkly. "Here's your cookies; now g'wan wid yez an' don't ye be afther botherin' me no more."
It was a matter which required concerted effort to uncoil the heavy hose, attach it to the water pipe and lift the nozzle to the level of the window; but it was accomplished at last through the united efforts of the two boys ably assisted by Doris, who was all excitement at the prospect of sliding on a real ice pond in her own yard.
"I guess our daddy'll be s'prised when he sees us goin' around like lightnin' on reg'lar ice," she said. "He's got skates, our daddy has, an' he c'n skate like everythin', our daddy can."
"Pooh! that's nothin'," retorted Master Stanford; "my father c'n beat your father all holler. He's a whole lot taller 'n your father, an' our house is higher 'n yours, too."
"It's p'liter not to brag," said Doris, ignoring her own deflections from civility. "Oh, my, look at the water spurting out of that teeny, weeny hole! It's just like a fountain."
The two boys were laboriously dragging the heavy hose across the yard, and in the process other holes appeared through which the water hissed and gurgled with increasing force.