"Since that happens to be my shirt waist, the one I am going to travel back to Richmond in, I'll thank you to get-rich-quick on one of your own . . . or this dirty middy blouse might prove a good medium," and she tossed a very soiled article over Dum's head. It happened to be a middy that she had gone crabbing in, so it was not overly pleasant. Anything was enough to start Tweedles in a romp, and in a minute the air was black with shoes and white with pillows, and what work we had accomplished was in a fair way to be done over.
Annie and I took to the farthest cot for safety and Mary perched upon the railing and egged the warriors to fiercer battle by giving her inimitable dog fight with variations. As is often the case, the non-combatants got the worst of the fight. Dee ducked a pillow, thrown with tremendous force by her opponent, and Annie got it square on her dainty nose, causing that aristocratic feature to bleed profusely.
"Oh, Annie, Annie, I'm so sorry!" wailed Dum.
"It is altogether my fault!" declared Dee. "I had no business ducking!"
"Id's dothing adall," insisted Annie, tightly grasping her offending member, "by old dose always bleeds. Jusd a liddle dab will draw de clared."
"Oh, but I just know it hurts awfully," and Dee raced off for a basin of cold water while Dum rummaged in the debris for some of the gentleman's handkerchiefs that she and Dee always used in common with their father.
Mary insisted upon dropping a large brass door key down the sufferer's back, declaring that nothing stopped nose-bleed so effectively as the shock occasioned by a brass door key dropped down the back.
"I just know it is going to disfigure you for days to come!" exclaimed Dee.
"Oh, I don't bind the loogs but id's just the bordification of being such a duisance," answered the poor girl, as usual embarrassed over being the observed of all observers. And just then in spite of the basin of gore and Annie's pitiful expression and Tweedles' great solicitude, Mary and I went off into uncontrollable giggles.
"I'm not laughing at you, Annie, but at your 'bordification,'" gasped Mary, holding her own nose to give the proper accent; and then everybody laughed and it had the effect described in the nursery rhyme: