“Ain’t pulling her tail,” replied Sammy promptly. “I’m only holding her tail. The cat’s doing all the pulling.”
Agnes bore down upon him and he immediately ceased holding poor pussy’s tail.
“Say! you’re awful particular,” complained the boy. “I wasn’t really hurting the old cat, Aggie. And—and it ain’t polite to always be interferin’ with a feller.”
“Now you’ve got it, Aggie,” chuckled Neale O’Neil. “You see you’re not polite. And politeness costs nothing.”
“Oh! doesn’t it?” returned Agnes. “Suppose you’d put ‘very respectfully yours’ at the end of that telegram you sent to the auto factory? I guess you’d have found it cost something.”
“Stung again!” admitted Neale.
“Why, what is all this I hear?” demanded Ruth, coming up from the horse trough pump bearing a brimming pail of water. “Did somebody get out of bed on the wrong side this bright and beautiful morning?”
“It was the cat,” said Neale, in a sepulchral voice. “She started it.”
“Which side is the wrong side of a hay-mow bed, Ruthie?” Tess asked.
“That’s a poser,” Neale said. “You’ll have to ask somebody else about that, eh, Ruth? Now, hustle along the breakfast, you girls, for I must start for Hickton.”