“You little piece! You might have been killed, and it would have served you right. I don’t believe you’ll ever be anything better than a tomboy as long as you live. If I was ma, I’d lick these tricks out of you, you bet.”
The frantic child, between her sister’s blows and angry words, was more like a furious little animal than a human being. Struggling in Rosetta Muriel’s grip, her face crimson with passion, she showed herself ready to use tooth and nail indiscriminately in order to free herself. For all her advantage in size and strength, Rosetta Muriel was unable to cope with so ferocious an antagonist. She solved the problem by giving Annie a violent push, as she released her hold. The child struck the ground at some distance and with a force which brought Peggy’s heart into her mouth. But immediately Annie scrambled to her feet, her face scratched and bleeding, and started toward home, screaming as she went, though less from pain than from anger.
“That brat!” cried Rosetta Muriel breathing fast. Then her eyes fell on Peggy, standing in disdainful quiet, and her expression showed uncertainty. Rosetta Muriel was hardly capable of appreciating that for one in a fit of passion to attempt to correct a child is the height of absurdity, but she recognized the indignation Peggy took no pains to hide.
“Does seem sometimes,” observed Rosetta Muriel with an unsuccessful effort to regain the air of languor which she imagined the badge of good breeding, “as if nothing I could do would make a lady out of that young one.”
“I should think not,” replied Peggy, and it was not her fault if Rosetta Muriel thought the remark ambiguous. “Good night,” she added hastily and turned away, fearful that a longer interview would bring her to the point of speaking her mind with a plainness hardly allowable on slight acquaintance. Like many people noted for tact and consideration, Peggy, when driven to frankness, left nothing unsaid that would throw light on the situation.
Dorothy walked at her aunt’s side with chastened step. In the chaos of feeling into which Rosetta Muriel’s unwise discipline had plunged her small sister, there was little chance for the voice of Annie’s conscience to make itself heard. But Dorothy, on the other hand, was the prey of conscientious qualms. She had been naughty. Annie’s angry big sister had said they might have been killed, which, from Dorothy’s standpoint, was censurable in the extreme.
“Aunt Peggy,” she began at last, in such a forlorn little pipe that Peggy was forced to steel herself against an immediate softening of heart. “Aunt Peggy, I guess you’d better whip me. If you send me to bed ’thout any supper it wouldn’t make me a good girl a bit, ’cause me and Annie ate lots of cookies and I don’t want any supper, anyway.”
Peggy studied the sunset earnestly before she could trust herself to reply.
“Dorothy, how often have you and Annie done what you did to-day?”
Dorothy was not certain, but it was evident that the diversion had been tried on several occasions and Peggy’s heart almost stood still, realizing the peril to which the children had exposed themselves. Without doubt their immunity was due to their very audacity. Apparently the boar had not connected these fearless mites with human beings whom he knew to be vulnerable, but had fancied them sportive elves, against whom his tusks would be powerless. Peggy registered a vow not to let Dorothy out of her sight again while the summer lasted.