“All right. We’ve got antiquities in our own country, haven’t we?” asked Rodney indignantly. “Look at the cliff dwellings!”
“What are those?” asked May.
“There it is!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “I knew it! Never heard of the cliff dwellers! That’s always the way with folks who spout about Europe. They don’t know what—what’s in their own country!”
“We will read about them,” replied May untroubled. “We will find a book in the library that tells about them. Please remind me, Matty.”
“You’d better,” grumbled Rodney. “Learn about your own country first, that’s what I say!”
“Of course,” agreed Matty, “only—well, we might not have another opportunity to go abroad for years and years, and so it wouldn’t do not to go just because we hadn’t seen those places you spoke of, would it?”
Rodney agreed that it wouldn’t. After that they talked of many things out there in the summer-house, while the sun sank lower and lower over the trees. And finally, just as Rodney had secretly hoped it would, the story of his dilemma came out. He wanted sympathy, and he received it, but he was a little bit annoyed at the manner in which the twins clasped their hands and said “Oh!” quite breathlessly when he told them that he was a brother of Ginger Merrill’s.
“Think of that!” exclaimed Matty, who was the first to recover from her surprise. “Aren’t you proud?”
“No, I’m not,” returned Rodney, speaking in very bored tones. “I wish Stanley had never been at school here.”