“Pooh! I know better’n that! Say, none of your sisters ever went and got married, did they, Jim?”
Went and got married! His little sisters! Jimmy pondered on this foolish question. Dick meant it as an insult to his mamma’s cooking, no doubt, though he could not see how. Making sport of her cake, indeed, and before it was baked!
Jimmy had tried to be polite to the boys as his guests; but boys who go visiting ought to be polite too.
“Dick Somers!” cried Jimmy in a towering rage, “you stop that! I don’t care if you did come from New York, you don’t know any more about my mamma’s cake than you do about—about horned toads, so there!”
It was just here that the pleasant voice called from the pantry window,—
“Jimmy, Jimmy, you may bring the eggs now.”
It was well that something should cut short Jimmy’s angry speech. It was not safe to discuss horned toads above all things with Dick. Jimmy always grew furious to hear Dick talk so wisely about them, when, as Gilly said, “he wouldn’t know one from a caterpillar;” whereas Jimmy had raised a whole family of the queer little creatures, and knew them like A B C.