"Hello, Sister," Louise greeted her when she raised a flushed, warm face and touseled hair from the canvas cushions. "You've had a fine nap. Want me to go upstairs with you and help you find a clean dress?"
"No," said Sister a bit crossly.
"You'll feel much better, honey, when your face is washed and you have on a thinner frock," urged Louise, putting down her knitting. "Come upstairs like a good girl, and I'll tell you what I saw Miss Putnam doing as I came past her house this afternoon."
Sister toiled upstairs after Louise, feeling much abused. She had not intended to take a nap, and now here she had slept away good playtime and was certainly warmer and more uncomfortable than she had been before she went to sleep.
But after Louise had bathed her face and hands in cool water and had brushed her hair and buttoned her into a pretty white dress with blue spots, Sister was her own sunny self. She had not been thoroughly awake, you see, and that was the reason she felt a little cross.
"What was Miss Putnam doing?" she asked curiously, watching Louise fold up the frock she had taken off.
"She was out in her yard nailing something on the fence," said Louise. "I saw her when I was a block away, hammering as though her life depended on it. A crowd of boys were watching her—at a safe distance—and when I came near enough I saw she had a roll of wire in the yard. She was nailing barbwire along the fence pickets!"
"How mean!" scolded Sister. "No one wants to climb over her old fence, or swing on her gate."
"Well, I think it is a shame the way the boys torment her," declared Louise severely. "Jimmie says he caught a little red-headed boy the other day throwing old tin cans over her fence. You know what Daddy would say if he ever thought you or Brother did anything like that."
"We don't," Sister assured her earnestly. "We never bother Miss Putnam."