"Then thou shalt have thy hot chocolate, sister mine!" cried Will, rubbing her ears.
"Oh, stop it!" she begged. "You hurt dreadfully, Will!"
"That's the way to make them warm," and he got back out of the way in time to avoid having his own ears soundly boxed.
Slowly the young people skated back. There were a number of others on the ice now, and soon our friends were in the midst of quite a throng.
"Here come Alice Jallow and Kittie Rossmore," murmured Mollie. "I hope they don't tag along after us."
"They're likely to," said Grace. "Though since that last little trouble they haven't been as unpleasant as they used to be."
The boys circled away from Betty and her chums momentarily, and the two girls referred to came skating past. They bowed rather coldly, and then, an acquaintance of theirs joining them, they stopped to chat with the latter. Mollie's skate again becoming loosened, she halted to adjust it, her friends waiting for her. It was thus that they overheard what Alice Jallow was saying to Margaret Black, the girl who had just come up.
"Yes," Alice spoke, "she gives herself as many airs as if she was somebody, instead of a nobody."
"A nobody?" repeated Margaret, wonderingly, "why——"
"Yes, indeed! She isn't even sure her name is Stonington, and as for Mr. and Mrs. Stonington being her uncle and aunt as she says, why, I heard the other day that there is doubt of that even. She and her chums think themselves high and mighty, but we wouldn't go with anybody that didn't know who they were!"