"All right! Never mind. We can do just as well without her," was the unexpected answer.
Betty looked puzzled. "Shall I give her any message from you about Saturday?" Betty said, preparing to leave the Eagle's Nest.
"What are you in such a hurry to be off for?" cried Lewis, rather louder than usual. "Aren't you going to stop and talk?"
"But Madge isn't here, and—"
"Oh, bother Madge!" interrupted Lewis. "You and John aren't her slaves, are you? Can't we have a bit of fun by ourselves for once, without having her interfering and trying to manage everything? I often wonder you two stand it! I know I wouldn't!"
"But I thought you and Madge were such friends!" said Betty, much bewildered by the strangeness of this declaration.
"She thinks you don't care to speak to us. Only to her, because she is older," chimed in John.
"Well, that's just where she makes a mistake," said Lewis roughly. "I can't abide girls who think they are so grand, and are always ordering other people about! Why, to hear her talk of this Eagle's Nest one would believe she made it all herself, and I daresay you and John worked just as hard as she did."
Now until this moment it had never struck Betty and John as strange that Madge should take the lead in everything. She was the oldest, biggest, and strongest of the three; and if she usually had her own way about everything, it had only seemed natural to the others that this should be so. Besides, she took all the trouble of making plans for them, and they really had much more fun under her guidance than they would have had alone. So it was quite a new view to them that they were oppressed, but when it had once been put into their heads they began to think that perhaps they had something to complain of after all.
"Now you won't be such silly sneaks as to go and tell Madge everything I have been saying?" observed Lewis rather anxiously when he noticed what a serious impression his words were making. "If you are such babies as that I shall never speak to you again. And I have not been saying any harm either, you know." He was beginning to fear, from the twins' solemn faces, that they would go home and repeat his words to Madge. "Only I have always thought you two looked such jolly little things, if your sister would give you a chance of being spoken to, or played with," he added.