Rob began singing the splendid Welsh battle-song as she in turn laid hold of the handle, as if she should not only succeed, but have breath to spare for a war-cry.
Roberta was slender, taller that Oswyth, but her young muscles were strong and well-poised, and to whatever task she essayed she brought an excess of nerve-power that rarely failed to bear her to victory on the very crest of the wave. She attacked the tough grass now with such enthusiasm that the balking lawn-mower yielded to her as most things did, and ran along quite meekly for a little while. But then it stopped, and when it did stop not Cleopatra's galley, buried under centuries of Nile mud, was more motionless than was Aunt Azraella's lawn-mower.
Rob pushed and pulled as both her sisters had pushed and pulled, losing her patience as she did so.
"No good, Bobs," said Prue, laconically and a trifle maliciously, for the family only nicknamed Rob "Bobs," after Lord Roberts, Kipling's "Bobs Bahadur," in allusion to her indomitable pluck and generalship, and used the name in moments of triumph, of which this was scarcely one.
Roberta pushed away her rebellious locks with the back of a slightly grimy hand.
"If I only had a scythe!" she murmured. "No machine can get through this jungle—I feared as much. I'd mow it if I had a scythe, though!"
"Now, Rob, you mustn't so much as think of one!" said Wythie, decidedly. "You know Mardy would be frantic if you were to swing one just once—you're so reckless! Promise you won't get one."
"I solemnly pledge myself to abstain from all intoxicating and entirely inaccessible scythes," said Rob, holding up both hands. "Where in the world should I get one, Wythie?"
"You always get anything you set your heart on," said Wythie, somewhat loosely, yet speaking from her knowledge of her sister.