“Mr. Telford, have you got any Huyler boxes?” asked the winner of the race, resting her gauntleted hands and her riding crop upon the counter. “These boys are trying to make me take two pounds of cinnamon suckers on a bet. Did you ever hear such nonsense? I couldn’t eat them in a year and real, sure-enough bets mean something better than suckers.”
“Wall, Miss Bev’ly, I aint rightly knowin’ what kind o’ lollypops is in them boxes, most times folks jist helps theirselves an’ I don’t pay no ’tention ter the brand. It’s all candy, I reckon,” answered the shop keeper, drawing two or three boxes from his case and placing them upon his counter. From the appearance of the wrappings they belied Huyler’s advertisement of being “fresh every hour,” though one of the boxes bore that firm’s name. The others were stamped by Martha Washington, Lowney and one or two other widely known manufacturers.
“Yes this one’s Huyler’s but I’ve got to have two this time. Yes I have too! Athol’s got to put up for one and you for the other. Why just look at me! The mud on me ought to just naturally make you both want to do something to pay up for making me get into such a state.”
“We didn’t make you! You started the circus,” protested her brother.
“Blessed if I’d do a thing for you if it wasn’t likely to be the last race we’ll have in one while. Look at those,” interjected Archie Carey, coming over from the letter window where he had gone to ask for the mail and slamming upon the counter beside the boxes of candy half a dozen plump letters. Three bore the addresses of the schools under consideration. All three faces grew sober.
“I’ll bet those will settle your hash Bev,” was Athol’s comment.
“Ah, why couldn’t you have been a boy instead of a girl anyhow,” protested Archie. “Then you’d have come along with us as a matter of course and our good times wouldn’t have all been knocked into a cocked hat.”
“Come on. Let’s go home,” said Beverly soberly, as she gathered up her boxes, nodded to Mr. Telford, and took her mud-splashed self from the store, the boys lingering to pay the bill.
She had remounted Apache when they joined her, Archie carrying the letters which he stuffed viciously into the mail-bag strapped to his saddle. Then the two boys sprang upon their waiting horses. As they rode in silence Beverly glanced down at her khaki riding skirt and at Apache’s mud-splashed body, and the next moment had stopped short, exclaiming:
“Look at us, and I promised mother I wouldn’t race!”