The excuse did not seem legitimate to Bep, whose grimy hands ached to the fingertips from being used as both pick and shovel. She made a dart for the "scooper"—a heavy china cup which had been smashed in so fortunate a manner as to be ideally fitted for emptying ore by hand.
But Fom was slim, and quick as a cat. She threw herself bodily upon both scooper and pick—the latter an old fork with but one tine left. Bep promptly threw herself on top of her twin, while Peter, a laconic lad, calmly set himself to rehabilitating the hind wheel of a battered tin toy express which served as a dump-cart.
"Little folks shouldn't quarrel," suddenly said a slow voice above the struggling arms and legs of the twins.
Fom looked up, still pressing her body hard against the tools in dispute, while Bep got to her feet, red-faced and panting. "We're not quarreling," said Florence, calmly.
Superintendent Warren Pemberton, still in his oilskins from a trip down the mine, looked down at her and gasped. He did not know the Madigan brunette twin, and actually thought she was lying. But Fom was never known to lie; she only pettifogged.
"You're not quarreling!"
"Nope."
"Didn't I see you with my own eyes?" he demanded, piqued.
"People don't see people quarreling," said Fom, didactically. "They hear them."
"Oh, that's it! Well, didn't I hear—"