“I guess you don’t want to know about it, after all,” she said indifferently.
“Yes, I do, honest! I—I beg your pardon, Miss.”
“Well, but please don’t call me Miss. I’m only thirteen and you’re not a miss until you have long dresses. Call me Molly. What do they call you? Jack?”
“No, Cal.”
“Cal? That’s a funny name. Is it your middle name?”
“No, it’s just—just a—a nickname.”
“Oh, all right.” She folded her hands in her lap, having finished with her apple, and considered her narrative. “Well, it all happened like this,” she began after a moment. “You see, there’s just me here and no one to play with. Of course I don’t mind that so very much because I like to read books and stories. But it would be nicer if I knew somebody, wouldn’t it? That’s what I told Aunt Lydia and she said it was too bad I wasn’t going to school because I’d meet lots of girls there. You see, father doesn’t want me to go to school this winter because I’m pretty well along anyhow and then my eyes got bad last spring. I told Aunt Lydia I guessed I’d like to know some of the boys next door, but she just held up her hands in horror. Did you know, Cal, that you are awfully bad? Aunt Matilda says so. She says you’re a—a— Oh, what was it? A ‘parcel of young varmints,’ that’s it!”
Cal grinned and Molly smiled back at him.
“I guess Aunt Matilda doesn’t like boys very well, though,” she continued extenuatingly. “Anyhow, she said I mustn’t think of playing with any of you. But I used to hear you across the hedge and one day I thought I’d like to see what a ‘varmint’ looked like. So I went over there and peeped through. You were playing tennis, some of you, and some of you were on the porch. And just then two—I think you were one of them, Cal—came over toward the hedge and I heard you talking.”