"What is it?" I said.
She pointed upward. I saw on the long spike which held the horseshoe over the door a pail of water so delicately hung that whoever first entered there must receive its contents in one fell unmitigated deluge upon the crown.
"Sh! It 's Wesley's" (her fellow-orphan) "it 's Wesley's birthday. I ain't got no present to give him, so I'm going to souze him with cold water: he 's bringin' in some wood—there 's steps! Sh!"
She ducked into the wood-box, which had subterranean channels of escape, with anticipated delight, and put down the cover, leaving me alone in the room with the approaching victim and in the unenviable position of appearing to be the sole perpetrator of this malign deed.
I had the merest time to master this idea, when the door swung in upon its hinges, and not Wesley, but Miss Pray herself, stood before me, a mad and a blighted object.
I gazed at her, horror-struck, and was endeavoring to speak, when Wesley, staggering in behind her with his arms full of wood, came to my relief. "O Miss Pray, 'twan't major, honest 'twan't, nor 'twan't me, Miss Pray: 'twas that Belle O'Neill, an' she 's mos' got to the graves by this time. I seed her runnin', through the windy. O Lord! O Miss Pray! how wet you looks when you're as wet as you be now, Miss Pray!"
"Indeed it was not meant for you," I cried. "Belle meant it for a birthday jest on Wesley."
"Oh, I wish it had b'en, Miss Pray," gasped poor Wesley, with ill-timed sympathy; "I'm so much more used to bein' wet 'n you be."
It was doubtful toward which Miss Pray was waxing most warm—the recusant Belle O'Neill, or the stupid, open-mouthed Wesley—when I stepped in at this juncture and entreated her with the Kobbes' invitation.
"I'll go," said she, with evident satisfaction gleaming even through her dripping state, "'s soon 's I've changed my do's and whipped Belle O'Neill."