NOW Prissy Smith was a girls' girl, while Cissy Carter was a boys' girl. That was mainly the difference between them. Not that Prissy did not love boys' play upon occasion, for which indeed her fleetness of foot particularly fitted her. Also if Hugh John teased her she never cried nor told on him, but waited till he was looking the other way and then gave him something for himself on the ear. But on the whole she was a girls' girl, and her idea of the way to fight was slapping her dolls when they were naughty.
Now, Mr. Picton Smith said that most religion was summed up in two maxims, "Don't tell lies," and "Don't tell tales." To these Hugh John added a third, at least equal in canonicity, "Don't be dasht-mean." In these you have briefly comprehended all the Law and the Prophets of the house of Windy Standard.
Cissy Carter, however, was a tom-boy: you could not get over that. There was no other word for her. She never played with girls if she could better herself. She despised dolls; she hated botany and the piano. Her governess had a hard but lively time of it, and had it not been for her brother Sammy coaching her in short cuts to knowledge, she would have been left far behind in the exact sciences of spelling and the multiplication-table. As it was, between a tendency to scramble for scraps of information and the run of a pretty wide library, Cissy knew more than any one gave her credit for.
On one memorable occasion it was Cissy's duty to take her grandmother for a walk. Now the Dowager Mrs. Davenant Carter was the dearest and most fairy-like old lady in the world, and Cissy was very proud to walk into Edam with her. For her grandmother had not forgotten how good confections tasted to girls of thirteen, and there was quite a nice shop in the High Street. Their rose-drops especially were almost as good as doing-what-you-were-told-not-to, and their peppermints for use in church had quite the force of a religious observance.
But Mrs. Davenant Carter had a weak eye, and whenever she went out, she put a large green shade over it. So one day it happened that Cissy was walking abroad with her grandmother, with a vision of rose-drop-shop in the offing. As they were passing one of the villas nearest to their house, a certain rude boy, Wedgwood Baker the name of him, seeing the lame old lady tripping by on her stick like a fairy godmother, called out loudly "Go it, old blind patch!"
He was sorry the minute after, for in one moment Cissy Carter had pulled off her white thread gloves, climbed the fence, and had landed what Hugh John would have called "One, two, three—and a tiger" upon the person of Master Wedgwood Baker.
I do not say that all Cissy Carter's blows were strictly according to Queensberry rules. But at any rate the ungallant youth was promptly doubled up, and retreated yelling into the house, as it were falling back upon his reserves.
That same evening the card of Mrs. Baker, Laurel Villa, Edam, was brought to the diningtable of Mrs. Davenant Carter.
"The lady declines to come in, m'am. She says she must see you immediately at the door," said the scandalised housemaid.