Pattie Batch had been doing nothing of the sort.
"Don't you so much as squint at my basket," John Fairmeadow growled.
Pattie Batch instantly did, of course—and with her eyes wide and sparkling, too. It was really something more than a squint.
"Keep your eyes off that basket, Miss Pry!" John Fairmeadow commanded, again. "Huh!" he complained, emerging from his refuge and throwing his mackinaw and cap on the floor; "anybody'd think there was something in that basket for you."
"There ith," Pattie Batch gasped, in ecstasy.
"Is!" John Fairmeadow scornfully mocked. "Huh!"
Pattie Batch caught John Fairmeadow by the two lapels of his coat—and she stood on tiptoe—and she wouldn't let John Fairmeadow turn his head away—(as if John Fairmeadow cared to evade those round, glowing eyes!)—and she looked into his gray eyes with a bewitching conglomeration of hope, amusement, curiosity and adoring childish affection. "There ith, too," she chuckled, her lisp getting the better of her. "Yeth, there ith. I know you, Mithter Fairmeadow."
John Fairmeadow ridiculously failed to smother a chuckle in a growl.
"Doth it bite?" Pattie Batch inquired, maliciously feigning a terrific fright.