“I do' know how to,” said Billy forlornly. “You turnt it on.”
“Drop the hose and run to the hydrant and twist that little thing at the top,” screamed Jimmy. “You all time got to perpose someping to get little boys in trouble anyway,” he added ungenerously.
“You perposed this yo'self,” declared an indignant Billy. “You said Aunt Minerva's so 'ligious she wouldn't git mad.”
“Christian womans can get just as mad as any other kind,” declared the other boy, sliding from his perch on the fence and running across his lawn to disappear behind his own front door.
Holding her skirts nearly up to her knees Miss Minerva stepped gingerly along the wet and muddy street till she got to her gate, where her nephew met her, looking a little guilty, but still holding his head up with that characteristic, manly air which was so attractive.
“William,” she said sternly, “I see you have been getting into mischief, and I feel it my duty to punish you, so that you may learn to be trustworthy. I said nothing to you about the hose because I did not think you would know how to use it.”
Billy remained silent. He did not want to betray his little companions of the morning, so he said nothing in his own defense.
“Come with me into the house,” continued his aunt, “you must go to bed at once.”
But the child protested vigorously.
“Don' make me go to bed in the daytime, Aunt Minerva; me an' Wilkes Booth Lincoln ain't never went to bed in the daytime since we's born, an' I ain't never hear tell of a real 'ligious 'oman a-puttin' a little boy in bed 'fore it's dark; an' I ain't never a-goin' to meddle with yo' ole hose no mo'.”