“I’m glad your feet didn’t come off too, then,” teased Nan. “At one time I thought they were going to.”
Billy produced a very shady handkerchief from a hip pocket and proceeded to wipe off the girls’ shoes, while he sang the sad song of the Three Flies:
“‘There were three flies inclined to roam,
They thought they were tired of staying at home,
So away they went with a skip and a hop
Till they came to the door of a grocer-ri shop.
“‘Away they went with a merry, merry buz-zz,
Till they came to a tub of mo-las-i-uz,
They never stopped a minute
But plunged right in it
And rubbed their noses and their pretty wings in it.
“‘And there they stuck, and stuck, and stuck,
And there they cussed their miserable luck,
With nobody by
But a greenbottle fly
Who didn’t give a darn for their miser-ri.’”
“But what I am worrying about,” he continued when his song had been applauded, “is how you are going to get home. Our car has been put out of commission for the winter. Mag and I had to foot it over the hill this morning, but our path is high and dry, while the road to Grantly is something fierce. If you get off at Preston and go home with us, I’ll get a rig and drive you over.”
“No, indeed, we couldn’t think of it,” objected Nan. “This is only the beginning of winter and we can’t get off at Preston every day and impose on you and your father’s horses to get us home. We shall just have to get some top boots and get through the mud somehow.”
“But you don’t know that stream. If it was high this morning, by afternoon it will be way up. The Misses Grant should have told you what you were to expect. They should have a bridge there, but it seems Miss Ella wants a rustic bridge and Miss Louise thinks a stone bridge would be better, so they go a century with nothing but a ford.”
“Going home I mean to pull another rail off the fence and do some pole vaulting,” declared Lucy. “I hope I can find Helen’s big old rubber I left sticking in the mud.”