“’Stop your scowling, for goodness’ sake, Dick.’”
“Brush it more on that side—no, you can’t go to the barber’s. You went last week. It looks perfectly well. I cut it? Why, I don’t know how to trim hair. Anyway, there isn’t time now. It will have to do. Stop your scowling, for goodness’ sake, Dick. Have you a handkerchief? It makes no difference, you must carry one. You ought to want to use it. Well, you should. Yes, they always do, whether they have colds or not. I don’t know why.
“Your Golden Text! The idea! No, you cannot. You can learn that Sunday before church. This is not the time to learn Golden Texts. I never saw such a child. Now take your pumps and find the plush bag. Why not? Put them right with Ruth’s. That’s what the bag was made for. Well, how do you want to carry them? Why, I never heard of anything so silly! You will knot the strings. I don’t care if they do carry skates that way—skates are not slippers. You’d lose them. Very well, then, only hurry up. I should think you’d be ashamed to have them dangling around your neck that way. Because people never do carry them so. I don’t know why.
“Now, here’s your coat. Well, I can’t help it, you have no time to hunt for them. Put your hands in your pockets—it’s not far. And mind you don’t run for Ruth every time. You don’t take any pains with her, and you hustle her about, Miss Dorothy says. Take another little girl. Yes, you must. I shall speak to your father if you answer me in that way, Richard. Men don’t dance with their sisters. Because they don’t. I don’t know why.”
He slammed the door till the piazza shook, and strode along beside his scandalized sister, the pumps flopping noisily on his shoulders. She tripped along contentedly—she liked to go. The personality capable of extracting pleasure from the hour before them baffled his comprehension, and he scowled fiercely at her, rubbing his silk stockings together at every step, to enjoy the strange smooth sensation thus produced. This gave him a bow-legged gait that distressed his sister beyond words.
“I think you might stop. Everybody’s looking at you! Please stop, Dick Pendleton; you’re a mean old thing. I should think you’d be ashamed to carry your slippers that way. If you jump in that wet place and spatter me I shall tell papa—you will care, when I tell him, just the same! You’re just as bad as you can be. I shan’t speak with you to-day!”
“Going daintily and dutifully to dancing-school.”
She pursed up her lips and maintained a determined silence. He rubbed his legs together with renewed emphasis. Acquaintances met them and passed, unconscious of anything but the sweet picture of a sister and a brother and a plush bag going daintily and dutifully to dancing-school; but his heart was hot at the injustice of the world and the hypocritical cant of girls, and her thoughts were busy with her indictment of him before the family tribunal—she hoped he would be sent to bed. Life is full and running over with just such rosy deceits.