"I know it, mother," replied Rob; "but you don't tell me any other word to say instead of it. A fellow must say something; and 'bully' 's such a bully word. I don't believe there's any other word that's good for any thing when things are 'bully.'"
"Oh, dear Rob! dear Rob! Three times in one sentence! What shall we do to you? We will really have to hire you to leave off that word, as grandpa hired you to drink cold water, at so much a week."
"Mamma," said Rob, solemnly, "you couldn't hire me to leave off saying 'bully.' Money wouldn't pay me: I try not to say it often, because you hate it so; but I don't expect to leave it off till I'm a man. I just have to say it sometimes."
"Oh, Rob, you don't 'have' to say it!" exclaimed Nell. "Nobody 'has to say' any thing."
"Girls don't," said Rob, patronizingly: "but girls are different; I'm always telling you that girls don't need words like boys. It's just like whistling: girls needn't whistle; but a boy—why, a boy'd die if he couldn't whistle."
"I can whistle," said Nell. "I can whistle most as well as you."
"You can't, Nell," exclaimed Rob, utterly astonished.
For reply, Nelly quietly whistled a bar of Yankee Doodle. Rob stared at her.
"Why, so you can!" said he. "I didn't know girls ever whistled: I thought they were made so they couldn't."
"Oh, no!" said Mrs. March; "I used to be a great whistler when I was a girl; but I never let anybody hear me, if I could help it. And Nelly knows that it is not lady-like for a girl to whistle. She likes to whistle as well as you like to say 'bully,' however; so you might leave off that as well as she can leave off whistling."