“When I said you’s the wickedest girl there is in this state, I didn’t mean so, Tate!”
“Of course you didn’t mean so, for you couldn’t,” replied good-natured Tate.
“No! I like you ever so much,” said Dotty, with emphasis, “only I don’t like you about your holding up your hand, nights, for that’s a lie.”
“But I haven’t held it up for the longest while, Dotty Dimple.”
“No; because Miss Parker has stopped asking if we whisper. What you s’pose made her stop? You’d do it just the same, Tate, if she asked us; but then I forgive you; you are some bad, but not so bad as Lina Rosenbug. It can’t hurt me if you do tell stories with your hands, and I want to sit with you again.”
“And so do I want to sit with you, Dot Dimple.”
“Miss Parker’s such a darling,” continued Dotty, “and that’s what I began to say in the first place: who knows but if we ask her in just the prettiest way—”
“Not to-day, but to-morrow,” said Tate; “wait and I’ll wear my ruffled apron, and we’ll go up to her together and tell her—”
“O, no, Tate, we mustn’t tell her Lina isn’t respectiful! P’r’aps she doesn’t know it, and it would be telling a tale. We’ll take hold of hands, and say, we want to be together, ’cause we’re the best friends that ever was, and mean to be as good as ladies.”
“Yes, that’s it,” said Tate; and the children parted at the foot of a blackened elm, which they called “the half-way tree.” It was the place where they usually parted at night with a mutual kiss.