"Mebbe I could," answered Becky, warily; "but it's a good bit ago."
"When you were young," cried one of the company with a giggle.
"Yes, when I was young," repeated Becky, in exact imitation of the speaker, whose voice was very flat and nasal.
Everybody laughed, and one of the girls cried: "Becky'll get the best of you any time." They were all of them impressed with this fact, when, a few minutes after, the wary Becky agreed to show Lizzie what she knew of "kinnergarden" basket-making, if Lizzie would agree to pay her for her trouble by giving her materials enough to make a basket for herself.
"Ain't she a sharp one?" commented one of the girls to another when they had left the lunch-room.
"Ain't she, though? She'll get what she can, and hold on to what she's got every time."
"But she's awful good fun. Didn't she take off Matty Kelley's flat nose‑y way of talkin' to a T?"
"Didn't she!" and the two girls laughed anew at the recollection.
CHAPTER II.
Becky was the only one of the parcel-girls who was in the lunch-room when this talk about May-day took place. The others lived nearer to the store, and had gone home to their dinners. They were all a trifle older than Becky, and a good deal larger. For these reasons, as well as for the fact that they had been in the establishment quite a while when Becky entered it, they had put on a great many disagreeable airs toward the pale-faced little girl when she first appeared, and attempted, as Becky put it, to "boss" her. They soon found, however, that the new-comer was too much for them. They expected her to be afraid of them,—to "stand round" for them. But Miss Becky was not in the least afraid of them, or, for that matter, of anybody; and as soon as she understood what they meant, she turned upon them the whole force of that inimitable mimicry of hers, and "took off" their airs in a manner that soon set the small army of salesmen and saleswomen into such fits of laughter that the tables were completely turned upon the tormentors, and they were only too glad to drop their airs and treat Becky with the respect that pluck and superior power invariably command. But while thus constrained to decent behavior before Becky's eyes, behind her back they gave way to the resentment that they felt against her for her triumph over them, and let no opportunity slip to say slighting things of her. Good-natured Lizzie would laugh when they said these things to her,—when they told her that Becky Hawkins was nothin' but one o' that low lot who lived down amongst that thieving set by the East Cove alleys,—that jus' as like as not she was a thief herself; that she was awful close and stingy, anyway, and saved up every scrap she could find; that they'd seen her themselves pick up old strings and buttons and such duds from the gutters! But if Lizzie laughed out of her light lively heart, and declared she didn't believe what they said was true, and didn't care if it was, there were others not so good-natured as Lizzie, who, though often vastly entertained by Becky, were quite ready to believe that the spirit of mimicry she possessed had something lawless about it, especially when she broke forth into the slang of the street,—"gutter-slang," the other parcel-girls called it,—the lawlessness seemed to gather a sort of proof. And so it was that, in spite of the entertainment she afforded, and a certain kind of respect in which her "smartness" was held, Becky was considered as rather an outsider, and an object of more or less suspicion.