“All right,” assented Dudley, “you’re boss. We’ll dump you anywhere you say. And oh, wait,” he slipped his hand into his pocket, “here’s a dollar to make up for your ducking and your cutting. And if you find any more fancy junk let me know.”
Nicky’s good luck seemed to be increasing, and he smiled broadly as he used his left hand to tuck the dollar bill into some sort of pocket. Queer, Barbara thought, how little boys can depend upon pockets in such tattered clothing, but somehow the pockets always did prove reliable. Who ever heard of a real boy losing money?
They found little sister ready to relinquish her hold on the ice-cream spoon, and to open her other hand to allow the cake crumbs to trickle through her brown fingers upon the plate Cara had set before her.
All the girls were gathered around the child, for Cara and Ruth had managed to get her talking and she had furnished them with quite an entertainment. They asked her all sorts of foolish questions, and even the cynical Esther did find cause for a good laugh when Victoria, aged four and a half years, tried to tell them what she learned at school—in her one week’s attendance there, just before school closed. It wasn’t anything like any one else had ever learned, according to Vicky. And even this little tot also appeared worried about her home, and kept asking for Nicky, constantly. When she finally understood that he was back from the doctor’s and ready to take her home, no amount of coaxing could get a reply from her.
“Goin’ home,” was her declaration. “Me and Nicky. Nobody else.”
Cara and the other girls had attached no significance to their insistence that “nobody else” should go along, but when Dudley offered to put her in the car she pulled back and shouted:
“You can’t go to our house!”
Even Barbara laughed and tried to assure her that only Nicky was to take her home. Nicky called out that it was “all right, come along and hurry up,” but even then it took considerable persuading to get her into the auto.
“Hey there, Babs!” called Ruth good-naturedly, “why can’t some of the rest of us play nurse?”
“Yes,” chimed in Louise, “why can’t we take a ride?”