"IT LOOKS LIKE HALF OF A SIXPENCE WHICH SOMEBODY HAS STEPPED UPON. HOW QUAINT!"
"Give it back to me this moment," cried Cissy, who had lost all her reserve, and suddenly grown whole years younger. "I didn't think any one in the world could be so mean. But I might have known. Do you hear—give it back to me, Hugh John."
With the utmost deliberation he snapped the catch and handed her the purse. The bit of silver he fitted carefully to the first piece he had taken from his ticket-pocket and held them up. They were the reunited halves of the same crooked sixpence.
Then he looked at Cissy with some of her own former calmness.
He even offered her the second fragment of silver, whereupon with a sudden petulant gesture she struck his hand up, and her own half of the crooked sixpence flew into the air, flashed once in the rays of the setting sun, and fell in the middle of the path.
Hugh John stood in front of her a moment silent. Then he spoke.
"Do you know, Cissy, you are a regular little fraud!"
And with that he suddenly caught the girl in his arms, kissed her once, twice, thrice—and then sprang over the stile, and down towards the river almost as swiftly as Prissy herself. The girl stood a moment speechless with surprise and indignation. Then the tears leaped to her eyes, and she stamped her foot.
"Oh, I hate you, I despise you!" she cried, putting all her injured pride and anger into the indignant ring of her voice. "I'll never speak to you again—not as long as I live, Hugh John Smith!"