“To be sure,” said old Mr. King, pulling himself out of his amusement, and wiping his face, “that is a consideration. Come, now, boys, hold up there; you must finish all this out-of-doors, if you’ve got to.”
“O Grandpapa!” interposed Phronsie, “please tell them not to finish at all. Make them stop always.”
“Well, at any rate, you must stop now, this minute; do you hear?” He stamped his shapely foot, and the combatants ceased instantly, King, in the sudden pause, finding himself at last on top.
“I could have beaten him all to nothing,” he declared, puffing violently; “but he jumped whack on me, and my arm got twisted under, and—and”—
“Never mind the rest of it,” said Grandpapa coolly; “of course you’d have beaten if you could. Well, Elyot, you did pretty good for a boy of five.”
“He was biting my sister,” declared Elyot, squaring up, with flushed cheeks, and clinching his small fists.
“Oh—oh!” cried Barby, who had held her breath in delighted silence while the encounter was in progress; and running up, her brown hair flying away from her face, she presented a fat arm for the old gentleman’s inspection.
“I don’t see any bite,” he said, after a grave scrutiny of it all over.
“Not yet,” said Barby, shaking her brown head wisely; “but it was coming—it truly was, Grandpapa.”
“Don’t worry till your miseries do come, little woman;” he swung her up over his white head, then put her on his shoulder.