“O, mamma!” said Kate, “Frank is so far behind now; I don’t see how he can ever catch up in this world, if he leaves school. He will get behind me in everything, and then when he goes again in the fall he won’t be in my classes at all.”
“My head aches!” said Frank; “it aches the whole time,” and so Frank was given leave to begin his summer vacation in June; but being out of school did not help the matter one bit; it only grew worse, until Frank became so thoroughly cross and fretful that nothing pleased him. His clothes weren’t fit to wear. Other boys whose fathers weren’t one bit richer than his, according to Frank’s version, had better suits than he had, and it was mean, downright mean, to make him dress so shabby. Neptune was a slow-go kind of a horse; getting old, too, and had an ugly way of stopping, just like a doctor’s horse, at every door-yard gate. Father was mean; mother didn’t love him half as much as she did Kate; and, as for Kate, he was nowhere since that Dobson boy, Harry Cornwall, had come; Kate was growing homely, too, getting freckled, and was getting as—well—anyhow she acted just like a boy, and boy-girls were his abomination.
When Kate heard him give utterance to the turn of his grievances, and he came to the final one, she retorted.
“Poor, little girl-boy!”
Frank struck her on the cheek so sharply that when Kate appeared at the tea table her finger-marked cheek caused her father to ask what it meant.
“O, not much,” said Kate, with a glance at Frank as much as to ask, “What shall I say?”
“Tell me what made the mark on your cheek,” said Mr. Hallock with such sternness that Kate felt the words jerked out of her, as she said, “Frank’s fingers, papa.”
“Frank’s fingers, indeed,” ejaculated Mr. Hallock. “Tell me, sir, what you meant by striking your sister?”
“She called me a girl-boy,” said Frank.
“He called me a boy-girl first, papa, and I didn’t strike him for it,”—Kate could not resist saying so much in her own favor.