Hugh John sighed. Girls were incomprehensible. Prissy liked church and being washed. Cissy, of whom he had more hopes, liked kissing.
"Well," he said, "goodness knows why you like it. I'm sure I don't and never shall. But—"
He ran to the corner and looked round into the stable-yard. All was quiet along the Potomac. He walked more sternly to the other corner, and glanced into the orchard. Peace reigned among the apple-trees. He came slowly and dejectedly back. In the inmost corner of the angle of the stable, and behind the thickest of the ivy bush, he straightened himself up and compressed his lips, as he had done when the Smoutchies were tying him up by the thumbs. He felt however that to beat Nipper Donnan he was ready to undergo anything—even this. No sacrifice was too great.
"All right," he said. "Come on, Cissy, and get it over—only don't be too long."
Cissy was thirteen, and tall for her age, but though fully a year younger, Hugh John was tall also, so that when she came joyously forward and put her hands on his shoulders, their eyes were exactly on a level.
"You needn't go shutting your eyes and holding your breath, as if it were medicine. 'Tisn't so very horrid," said Cissy, with her hands still on his shoulder.
"Go on!" said Hugh John in a muffled voice, nerving himself for the coming crisis.
Cissy's lips just touched his, rested a moment, and were gone.
Hugh John let out his breath with a sigh of relief like an explosion; then he stepped back, and promptly wiped off love's gage with the sleeve of his coat.
"Hold on," cried Cissy; "that isn't fair. You know it ain't!"