"In ten minutes," sang Margery to the accompaniment of the scale. "Play with Tommy Traddles while you wait."
"Oh, Margery, won't you stop?" cried Trix, after three minutes had passed. No answer but arpeggios. "Margaret Gresham, you're chewing gum," cried Trix, resorting to strategy.
"I am not," said Margery, coming down in flat contradiction and a false chord at one and the same time. "I'm chewing the side of my tongue."
"Why don't you have a cud?" asked Trix, delighted at having trapped Margery into speech. But she was not to be caught again.
Shaking her head she began playing her new piece, which, true to her principles, she had left till the last. Finally the tiresome clock struck once. Trix sprang up.
"You shall not finish that page," she cried, catching Margery around the waist and pulling her off the stool. "You said half-past, and it is half-past; so stop."
"But I must finish that page, Trix," she protested. "Unfinished tunes I can't stand."
"Well, you'll have to," declared Trix. "Listen to me. The Dismals is rented!"
"The Dismals" was the children's name for a very large, untenanted place called the Evergreens.
"Why, the Dismals is never rented!" cried Margery. "It hasn't had any one in it since we were born."