"It always happens just this way, Roxy," said Belle in a reproving tone of voice. "You promised to begin to get ready last night, so as not to delay anything or anybody. We're just not going to wait!"
"I did try, Belle," answered Roxanne, with a little sob coming into her voice that made both Tony and me so mad at one time that it is a wonder that we didn't both explode together.
"Here, you bubbles," said Tony, jumping the gate as I went through it, "get busy with this situation. We've got almost a half-hour, so be doing something, everybody. Belle, you help Roxy skin that kid and get him into clean clothes while I swab up and light old Pomp's jimson-weed pipe for him?" And as Tony spoke he started to the rear of the house.
"No, no. I'm hurted bad, and I won't let anybody but Phyllis touch me. I'll out off Belle's arm if she comes nigh me," said Lovelace Peyton in the rudest voice; but it did me good to get hold of him and begin to peel him while Roxanne stood petrified at the idea of hurrying all her calamities onto the car in twenty minutes.
"Oh, I'm not dressed and the pies are not packed and—" began Roxanne, but the dimple also began to play at the same time.
"I'll help you dress, Roxanne," said Belle meekly; for Belle is more afraid of Tony's explosions than of anything else on earth, and he had looked at her with a stern expression as she had fussed at and threatened to leave Roxanne.
"I'll pack the pies," said Mamie Sue, with plain delight at the prospect.
"Well, hurry, Dumpling, and don't take a bite out of a stray corner of more than half those pies," Tony answered her as he rolled up his shirt sleeves and started toward the kitchen. All the other members of the Raccoon Patrol were with the other girls at the station, and nobody could go without Tony, who had bought the combination ticket for everybody, at a bargain.
It is all very well to say that "haste makes waste," but there is a kind of hurry that gets things done, and Tony knows how to put that kind into action. He and Mamie Sue kept to the kitchen as their scene of operations, and before we knew it old Uncle Pomp was seated humped over his pipe and beginning to breathe easy. Mamie Sue had hopped around to keep out of the swirls of Tony's mop while she packed those ill-fated but precious pies in the basket, and she was breathing almost as hard as Uncle Pompey.
I did the best I could with Lovelace Peyton, though only the blue apron with the largest pink patches was whole and clean; so he had to go that way, which I know hurt Roxanne, for he had been so lovely to look at in his part of the grandmother's sheet.