"Ah-a-a-a!" howled the victim, writhing in misery.
"Hold on there, youngster!" shouted Mr. Hickey, whose experienced eye had taken in the situation at a glance. "Wait till I get some hot water; don't move, boys! Don't touch him, Evelyn!"
It was the work of several moments to successfully detach the rash experimenter from his uncomfortable proximity to the iron fence. But Mr. Hickey accomplished the feat, with a patience and firmness which won for him the loud encomiums of Mrs. Stanford's Irish Annie, who came out bare-armed to assist in the operation.
"Oh, you're the bad boy entirely!" she said to Robbie, who stared open-mouthed at the scene from the safe vantage ground of the back stoop. "Many's the time I've towld what would happen to yez if you put yer tongue t' th' fence in cowld weather."
"I wanted to see if it was true," said Master Stanford coolly. "You said th' was a p'liceman comin' after me, an' th' wasn't, when I ate the frostin' off your ol' cake."
"If your mother was here she'd be afther takin' th' paddle to yez," said Annie wrathfully. "I've a mind to do it meself."
Master Stanford fled to the safe shelter of the library where Carroll, ensconced on Mr. Hickey's knee, was being soothed with various emollients and lotions at the hands of Miss Tripp.
"I should never have known what to do," she said, looking up from her ministrations to find Mr. Hickey's eyes fixed full upon her. "How could you think so quickly?"
"Because I tried it myself once upon a time," said Mr. Hickey. "It's about the only way to learn things," he added somewhat grimly. "But I wish our young friend had taken another day for improving his knowledge on the subject of the prehensile powers of iron when applied to a moist surface on a cold day."
For some reason or other he felt very much neglected and correspondingly out of temper as Miss Tripp ministered to the numerous wants of her small charges during the half hour that followed. To be sure she poured him a cup of tea (which he detested) and pressed small frosted cakes upon him with the sweetest of abstracted smiles.