"Oh, I don't know," said Betty in reply to Mollie's gloomy prediction. "It won't be the first time we've accomplished the impossible."
"But it will soon be dark."
"Goodness! it won't be dark for hours and hours," Betty laughed at her. "And this oughtn't to take us more than half an hour at the longest. Come on now, let's get busy."
Thus inspired, the girls "got busy," but they were tired with the long drive and everything seemed to go wrong. Their usually skillful fingers fumbled, the tire was "too big or too little or something," to quote Amy, and at the end of a quarter of an hour's useless struggle their tempers were worn to a frazzle and they were ready to cry.
"Well, I never had anything act like that before," cried Mollie irritably. "I'd like to give the person that wrote about the 'depravity of inanimate things' a medal. The old tire's got a mean disposition, that's all."
"Well, it isn't the only one," Grace was beginning, when Mollie turned and glared at her.
"If you mean me—"
"I meant all of us," Grace explained. "As long as we have been going together, this is the first time I can remember when all of us have been in the doleful dumps at once."
This brought a reluctant smile even to Mollie's gloomy countenance, and Betty laughed merrily.
"Perhaps it's just as well," said the Little Captain, adding with a chuckle: "It's the same way with onions—if everybody eats 'em, no one can notice the unpleasantness in the other fellow."