“But I can’t wear them. Oh! I c-can’t wear--them!” The boy eyed the tiny gingham garment as if Peace Day had, in aviator’s slang, become a pancake wreck, its joy all flattened. “They’re girl’s!”
He leveled a mud-caked forefinger at an utterly ignominious half-inch of embroidery decorating those romper-leglets of his twin sister.
“Daddy-man w-wouldn’t want me to wear them! Daddy-man’s a soldier--my Bob-daddy is! He’s over in France--now!”
Bob-sonny of four and a half looked sidelong out of a rolling eye-corner at the two spick and span Camp Fire Girls, in costume of red, white, and blue.
In this contest, however, those victorious colors, so triumphant over there, were coolly neutral.
He attacked the grandmother with pleadings--the two freshly laundered rings of embroidery weaving chains about the manikin soul within him, as he rebelliously eyed them.
“Come! Come! No more nonsense now!” Grandmama suddenly set her foot down. “I wonder you aren’t ashamed! You’ll have to wear ’em--or stay at home!”
She departed, on an errand, to the near-by kitchen.
Once more Bobbie’s insulted eye implored the Minute-Girls, still neutral.
Then he retreated into an adjoining bedroom, whose door was wide open, and knelt upon a low chair--desperately, as soldiers kneel in the trenches.