“You do it and I’ll watch.”
“Foxy. Suppose some of the eagles see you. How do we know this isn’t sort of an initiation?”
“We don’t. I never thought of that, little Brightness. As you say, we had better follow directions, and not be compelled to wear our waists inside out, or parade two different colored stockings. Here, give me the pesky thing. I’ll hie me to the dump with it and so cast off the spell.”
Almost as quickly as she had posted the letter did she “dump the thing and beat it,” in her own inelegant language. She now stood before Trixy making foolish faces.
“Ugh!” she exclaimed, brushing her hands to shed the imagined pollution, “now it’s all over. And we’ve lost trace of the Pirate’s Daughter.”
“There’s no telling,” presaged Trixy. “She may remember you in her will.”
“And again she may not. Well, may all our ill health go with it, as dear old Jane would say. Trixy, when do we go out to see our anxious friends?” (This meant the home folks.)
“I dunno. But let’s stick it out for a while and then, when we do take a little trip to Sandford, we won’t feel like a couple of hookey kids. Not that I wouldn’t love to see my mommer right now——”
“And my—da-da!”
Reflection brought gloom. Forgotten was the frozen blood stone and the old brass vase. Two girls sat glum, with heads down and knees up, with chins pushed up into pouting lips, and naught but an occasional groan or grunt giving sign of articulation.