“Don’t call him that,” begged David, who had shivered all through Joel’s performance. “Mamsie, please don’t let Joel call him that.”
“No, Joel, you mustn’t,” said Mrs. Pepper; “say, instead, ‘How good he was!’”
“He said I had good fists,” said Joel, doubling up his little brown hands to view them affectionately.
“Fists are to be used only when you are sure it is right to do so,” said Mrs. Pepper. “Remember that, Joey.”
“Oh, hello!” Joel, at last obliged to drop his imaginary performances as a bull, had run out to pick up some kindlings. By the side of the woodshed he ran against a boy. It was Peletiah.
“I didn’t tell my father and my mother you wouldn’t let me get on my big stone,” he said.
“It was my stone,” declared Joel, squaring up to him. “I got on it first.”
“You got off of it,” said Peletiah, “and that made it mine when I got on.”
“I was coming back when I got Davie’s fish-hook fixed,” said Joel stubbornly. “It was my big stone.”
“It was mine, and you came up and scrouged,” said Peletiah, bobbing his tow head obstinately.