“Oh, I don’t want to touch him! I never could bear to do anything of this sort!” shuddered Mrs. Garden.
She went up to the boy, nevertheless, and shrinkingly took him by the two dryest spots that she could select on his shoulders and turned him. He resisted her and made the turning unexpectedly hard, considering that he had fallen as he lay when he had entered, as if his last drop of strength had been drained. Pulling him over, Mrs. Garden fell back with a cry.
“Florimel! Florimel, you little wretch! Whatever is wrong with you? Why are you in such clothes?” she gasped.
Florimel lay on her back, the hot sunshine of noon streaming down on her mischievous face. Her black hair, shaken loose by her movement, tumbled about her from the sombrero covering it. Her eyes danced, her red cheeks dimpled, and her teeth gleamed as she lay, laughing till she could not speak, ripples and chuckles shaking her, the picture of supreme enjoyment.
“You handsome imp!” cried her mother, as if she could not help it. “You frightened me almost out of my life. I never dreamed it was you. Whatever did you do it for?”
“That’s why: to scare you,” said Florimel, lying still, in no hurry to get up, nor having much breath with which to do so. “I was watching you this morning and I thought you looked dull; I thought, maybe, you’d like to have something happen. Whenever we get to feeling that way it’s up to Jane or me to start something. I knew Jane wouldn’t dare, not for you, yet, so I did. Got these things down at Allie Ives’, her brother Phil’s, you know.” Florimel turned her brilliant eyes on her sisters, expecting them to recognize Phil Ives. “Allie and I muddied them up—Mrs. Ives didn’t care, Phil’s outgrown them—and we turned the hose on me; I never take cold, Anne knows it! Then I ran home, by the back way, and tumbled in here! I thought it would scare you! It did, didn’t it?” Florimel pleadingly asked her mother, desiring to hear again of her complete success.
“Certainly it did, dreadfully.” Mrs. Garden’s tone was satisfactory to Florimel.
“Didn’t any one see you coming home, Florimel? What would they think!”
“That’s all right, little motherkins,” cried Florimel, jumping up and displaying her costume, with its muddy wetness, to such a ridiculous effect that there was no scolding her, for it was funny. “I didn’t meet any one but the Episcopalian minister, and he loves nonsense, and the grocer’s boy, and he grinned; he loved it! And an old funny woman down the street who is too nearsighted to see I wasn’t some boy—unless Chum gave me away, but I guess she doesn’t know Chum! Anyhow, people all know we’re the Garden girls, and Vineclad always looks up to Gardens, so it doesn’t matter. Besides, they expect me to cut up; I always do—and Mary never! It’s all right, mothery. Do you like me better as a boy? I do. Why didn’t you let the baby be a boy, little mother? When you had two girls, and she’d have loved so to have been one?”
“Did you actually do this because you wanted to entertain me?” asked Mrs. Garden, looking as helpless as she felt, laughing, yet puzzled by this prank.