“He ought to have been!” declared Belle Ringold promptly. “He was headed the wrong way. I’ll testify for you, Bill. Of course he was headed wrong.”
“Why, you’re another!” cried Monty. “If I’d been headed the wrong way you’d have smashed the pony instead of the carriage.”
“Never mind what they say, Monty,” Jessie Norwood put in quietly. “There are three of us here who saw the collision, and we can testify to the truth.”
“And me. I seen it,” added Henrietta eagerly. “Don’t forget that Spotted Snake, the Witch, seen it all. If you big girls tell stories about Monty and that pony, you’ll wish you hadn’t—now you see!” and she began making funny gestures with her hands and writhing her features into perfectly frightful contortions.
“Henrietta!” commanded Jessie Norwood, yet having hard work, like Nell and Amy, to keep from laughing at the freckle-faced child. “Henrietta, stop that! Don’t you know that is not a polite way—nor a nice way—to act?”
“Why, Miss Jessie, they won’t know that,” complained little Henrietta. “They are never nice or polite.”
At this statement Monty Shannon burst out laughing, too. The red-haired boy could not be long of serious mind.
“Never you mind, Brewster,” he said to the unfortunate driver of the red car, who was notorious for getting into trouble. “Never mind; we ain’t killed. And your father can pay Cabbage-head Tony all right. It won’t break him.”
“You impudent thing!” exclaimed Belle Ringold, who was a very proud and unpleasant girl. “You are always making trouble for people, Montmorency Shannon. It was you who would not finish stringing our radio antenna at the Carter place and so helped spoil our picnic.”
“He didn’t! He didn’t!” ejaculated Henrietta, dancing up and down in her excitement. “It was me—Spotted Snake! I brought down the curse of bad weather on your old picnic—the witch’s curse. I’m the one that brought thunder and lightning and rain to spoil your fun. And I’ll do it again.”