These latter touches of color being a trifle faded had the dejected air of not being able to vie with the thick ruddiness of Penelope’s wrists which clung to the gate-bars and the florid hue of her plump cheeks.
“Hullo-o, Sally! Is—is it ‘nobody home’ this morning? Don’t you want to speak to me?” challenged the jay-like voice, as Penelope’s face hung out over the gate.
At this the golden firefly in Sally’s eyes wheeled doubtfully, now toward that raw, new white gate, now toward Olive: Olive, whose father was a very important personage, indeed, and her father’s employer at the Works; Olive, who had plainly inherited the flower of good breeding, nourished in the soil of wealth. And reading a contempt for Tingles and tingling voices in Olive’s face, little horse-loving Sally, who generally could be the best kind of a small sportswoman, figuratively gathered her garments (neat and trim as when she was mounted, from her simple whip-cord skirt to her Camp Fire Girl’s knockabout hat) about her and, like the priest and Levite of old, passed by on the other side, leaving Penelope to her wounding manners and with a bruise in her heart.
All of which means that she returned Penelope’s vociferous greeting with a stiff nod only suited to the inside of an ice-house!
The Tingle girl ceased swinging as if petrified and stared after her; then she burst into a high shriek of exasperated laughter and hailed a boy upon a vacant lot across the street.
“Hullo! Rolie,” she cried, “do you know that there’s a frost this morning; it froze hard here just now,” pointing her slangy sarcasm by a red forefinger leveled at Sally’s receding back.
“Ss-sh! you’re crazy,” expostulated the lad who wore a Boy Scout suit.
“If I’m ‘crazy,’ you’re hazy—hazy in the brain! He! He! He! Hi! Ha!” The retort and the shrill laughter followed the quintette of girls down the street.
“Isn’t she dreadful?” gasped fair little Betty who had named the Morning-Glory Camp Fire. “I should think she is one big tingle; henceforth I’ll feel her a mile off!”
“Perfectly horrid!” acquiesced Olive.