"Bully for you, Hazel! I knew you 'd show lots of pluck," cried Budd.
"Got grit every time," said Chi, proudly. "Now let's have the other test and get down to business. Guess all three of you 'll have to have a finger in this pie. Hurry up, Marthy Washin'ton!" Cherry scuttled down the ladder, and in a few minutes labored, panting, up again.
"What did you bring two for?" demanded Budd.
"'Cause March said 't would balance me better on the ladder," replied Cherry, innocently. At which explanation Chi laughed immoderately, much to Cherry's discomfiture.
"Now, Hazel, roll up your sleeve and hold out your bare arm," said the Marquis. Hazel obeyed, wondering what would come next.
"Here, Budd, you hold it; all ready, Cherry?"
"Ye-es--wait a minute; now it's all right."
"This we call burning in the Society's brand,--N.B.B.O.O.;" the voice of the Marquis was solemn, befitting the occasion.
Hazel drew her breath sharply, uncertain whether to cry out or not. There was a sharp sting across her arm, as if a hot curling-iron had been drawn quickly across it; then a sound of sizzling flesh, and the odor of broiled beefsteak rose up just under her nostrils.
There was a diabolical thud of falling flat-irons; Rose tore the bandage from Hazel's eyes, and the bewildered candidate for membership, when her eyes grew somewhat wonted to the dim light, found herself in a corner of the loft in the barn, with the elegant figure of the Marquis in cocked hat, white wig, yellow vest, blue coat, and yellow knee-breeches dancing frantically around her; Ethan Allen in white woollen shirt, red yarn suspenders, and red, white, and blue striped trousers, turning back-hand somersaults on the hay; Chi standing at salute with his great-great-grandfather's Revolutionary musket, his old straw hat decorated with a tricolor cockade, and Cherry in a white cotton-wool wig, a dark calico dress of her mother's and a white neckerchief, flat on the floor beside two six-pound flat-irons.