He kicked the sand at his feet peevishly.
“Come on! Let’s make believe we didn’t hear him. He hasn’t seen us and we can hide from him.”
Janet was about to agree to this, but Trouble was smarter than either of the older ones gave him credit for. He had run on after his first call, and now he stood where he could look full at Ted and Jan.
“I see you!” he laughed. “You playin’ hide-an’-find? Anyhow, mother says you have to ’muse me! Go on! ’Muse me!”
Mrs. Martin often, when she was tired of looking after William or when she had to do something else, would call to the other children:
“Come and amuse Trouble!”
Nearly always Jan or Ted would be glad to do this. But now they had something else they wanted to do.
“Too late!” sighed Ted. “We can’t skip away from him now.”
“No, if we did he’d tell mother,” agreed Janet. “Oh, I know what we can let him do! He can do it all alone, too, so we can go to the diamond mine!” she added.
“What?” asked Ted, to whom the reference to a “diamond mine,” did not seem strange. That was part of the game they were going to play.