"You have brought a great deal of delight into the village. Wyndham," said Carr, and he related the little scene which had taken place around the school-house. "I'd give a good deal to be even half as popular," he said with a sigh.
"You might give all you possessed in all the world, and you wouldn't succeed," snapped Gussie.
"Augusta, you really are too rude," said Lilias with a flush on her face.
"No, I'm not, Lil. Oh, you needn't stare at me. I like him, and he knows it," nodding with her head in the direction of Adrian Carr; "but you have to be born in a place, and taught to walk in it, and you have had to steal apples in it and eggs out of birds' nests, and to get nearly drowned when fishing, and to get some shot in your ankle, and you've got to know every soul in all the country round, and to come back from school to them in the holidays, and for them first to see your moustache coming; and then, beyond and above all that, you've got just to be Gerry, to have his way of looking, and his way of walking, and his way of shaking your hand, and to have his voice and his heart, to be loved as well. So how could Mr. Carr expect it?"
"Bravo, Augusta," said Adrian Carr. "I'd like you for a friend better than any girl I know."
"Please, Gerry, tell us a story," exclaimed the younger children. They did not want Augusta to have all the talking.
"Let it be about a mouse, and a cricket on the hearth, and a white elephant, and a roaring bull, and a grizzly bear."
"And let the ten little nigger-boys come into it," said Betty.
"And Bo-Peep," said Rosie.
"And the Old Man who wouldn't say his prayers," exclaimed Joan.