“Can’t Ah help yo’ find yo’ tempah, Louise?” Billy called teasingly after her, with a purposely exaggerated Southern accent. There was no answer.
“You’d be cross, too, if you were Louise,” Winona defended her friend. “One of the things she stayed down from camp over to-night for was that she and Tom were going off to kodak some cloud effects for a magazine prize. And she was going to try to get some photographs that would count in Camp Fire work, too. And Tom’s walked off, forgetting all about it.”
“Why didn’t you remind him?” asked Billy sensibly.
“Louise wouldn’t let me. She said she’d go straight back if I did.”
“Well, she needn’t have taken it out on me,” said Billy plaintively. “I didn’t break any engagements. I suppose she has a red-haired temper.”
Meanwhile Louise, after she banged the screen-door, had gone straight through the house to the back. Mrs. Merriam was in the living-room, which prevented her crying there. She was very much hurt at Tom’s forgetfulness. They had been chums for a long time, and this particular expedition after cloud effects had been something they had planned long before the Scouts’ camp broke up. And now Tom had gone gayly off, forgetting all about it. It really was horrid.
Crying on a bed is hot work in summer, so she decided to go out back and do it. She sat on the porch, put her arms on the back of a chair and began to cry.
But circumstances seemed to be against her. Puppums, who had been asleep under a chair, got up, yawned, sauntered across the porch, and sat down by her. Then he proceeded to whine for her to turn around, make a lap, and take him up into it.
“Oh, do stop!” said Louise indignantly, when the whining had gone on steadily for some minutes. But if you took any notice of Puppums he merely argued that a little more work would get him what he wanted, and went on begging. In the present instance he answered Louise by lifting his nose further up in the air, and howling, as if he wished to assure her that he felt for her.