EITHER of the girls could tell which awoke first on New Year's morning, for as Agnes said at the breakfast table, when they looked at each other they were both awake.
Guy declared it was no wonder she graduated with such high honor when she was so extremely wise; and Ruth gave it as her opinion that she always had been a most precocious child, relating instances, some of them so amusing that with the recollection came a general outburst of merriment. "Do you remember the time the Millerites were making such an ado about the world coming to an end, Guy, how she went to mother and asked if it twisted itself round and round until it came to the end?"
"Don't I though, and the day she asked mother if vertigo meant a monkey. When mother told her no and laughed, she said it must be some animal, for she read in the paper that a man went up into a tree and while there was seized with vertigo."
"And the day she was transferred to another school, when she said she had a note of transubstantiation."
"Yes, and"—Guy was about to continue, but Agnes declared she was not going to sit there as a target for their fun, and ran laughing out of the room.
"What are you going to do with yourselves, girls?" asked their brother, as lighting a cigar he prepared to go out.
"O we are going to stay at home and have a nice time; you know holidays don't come very often."
"Well, you women folks have queer ideas of a nice time, if that is what you call staying in the house. Why, it is enough to make you stupid. Fix yourself up like other girls, and promenade; that is what I mean to do."
"What, fix yourself up like other girls?" demurely asked Agnes, glad of an opportunity to pay him back.