“Look here, boys, it really isn’t fair,” said Faith, “you’re two to one, and you know that Andrew isn’t half as strong as either of you.”
“Yes,” added Phoena, “and if you go on bullying him much more, it’s acting rather as he did to Hubert.”
“Well, there’s something in that,” admitted Jack, “after all, Phil, it’s only poor Annie, and it’s just a girl’s trick to knock over one of the infants to show her strength.”
“Yes, just the sort of thing a little girl would do,” echoed Phil, “here, get up, Miss Annie, we’ll forgive you. Lend me a hand, Jack, we must help a lady to rise properly.”
Therewith Jack seized one luckless arm, whilst Phil held fast the other, so between them the “lady” was certainly assisted to rise, with good will, if not exactly with courtesy!
“And now we’ll conclude this entertainment,” said Jack, “with a new kind of rock-it” and with a significant wink at Phil, they set to work to shake Andrew backwards and forwards between them, till every tooth in his head must have trembled in its socket.
And all the time they sang loudly in his ears, to a tune of their own, the offending chorus of Di’s song.
Though Andrew was a year older, and much taller than Jack, and “twice as fat as both he and Phil put together,” as his cousins always assured him, the treatment received at their hands so far cowed him, that once released, he slunk away without a word.
But, coward as he was, he could not resist the temptation of pinching Marygold’s arm viciously as he passed behind her.
“Oh! oh! he did pinch me hard,” she cried, with a very pink face and quivering lips. She would have spilt her blood to avenge any injury inflicted upon Hubert, but she struck no blow to avenge her own. “You are a werry mean boy,” she said, “but p’raps you can’t help it, for I heard Ruth say that you seemed a poor house-lamb sort of young gentleman.”