“Now, children! children!” admonished Mildred. “Can’t you be together at all without scrapping?”
“And what about the wind, Mildred?” asked Dan.
“You boys were all down to the Boat Club last night, I hear. What is doing?”
“Aw, don’t tell ’em, Dan!” urged Billy, as though he really meant it. “They’ll want to play the part of the Buttinsky Sisters—you know they will!”
“I like that!” gasped Lettie, clenching her little gloved fist. “Oh! I wish sometimes I was a boy, Billy Speedwell!”
“Gee, Lettie! Isn’t it lucky you’re not?” he gasped. “There’d be no living in the same town with you. I like you a whole lot better as you are——”
Dan and Mildred laughed, but Lettie was very red in the face still, and not at all pacified, as she declared:
“I believe I’d die content if I could just trounce you once—as you should be trounced!”
“Help! help! Ath-thith-tance, pleath!” begged Billy, keeping just out of the red-haired girl’s reach. “If you ever undertook to thrash me, Lettie, I know I’d just be scared to death.”
“Come now,” urged Mildred. “You are both delaying the game. And it’s cold here on the street corner. I want to know.”