III.
Oh, Mag, Mag, for heaven's sake, let me talk to you! No, don't say anything. You must let me tell you. No—don't call the other girls. I can't bear to tell this to anybody but you.
You know how I kicked when Tom hit on Latimer's as the place we were to scuttle. And the harder I kicked the stubborner he got, till he swore he'd do the job without me if I wouldn't come along. Well—this is the rest of it.
The house, you know, stands at the end of the street. If you could walk through the garden with the iron fence you'd come right down the bluff on to the docks and out into East River. Tom and I came up to it from the docks last night. It was dark and wet, you remember. The mud was thick on my trousers—Nance Olden's a boy every time when it comes to doing business.
"We'll blow it all in, Tom," I said, as we climbed. "We'll spend a week at the Waldorf, and then, Tom Dorgan, we'll go to Paris. I want a red coat and hat with chinchilla, like that dear one I lost, and a low-neck satin gown, and a silk petticoat with lace, and a chain with rhinestones, and—"
"Just wait, Sis, till you get out of this. And keep still."
"I can't. I'm so fidgety I must talk or I'll shriek."
"Well, you'll shut up just the same. Do you hear me?"
I shut up, but my teeth chattered so that Tom stopped at the gate.
"Look here, Nance, are you going to flunk? Say it now—yes or no."