"Oh, don't say such dreadful things," pleaded the Little Blues. "Mrs. Wendte will mend her, I am sure, and make her last. What did your girl do with her sweetmeat?"
"Ate it up directly, of course. What else should one do with a sweetmeat?" snapped the White Pair crossly. "Oh, dear! my toe feels dreadfully ever since you said that; quite neuralgic!"
"My boy was not so foolish as to eat his sweetmeat," said the Big Gray stockings. "Only girls act in that way, without regard to anything but their greedy appetites. He traded his with another boy, and he got a pocket-knife for it, three screws, and a harmonica. There!"
"Was the knife new?" asked the Blue.
"Could the harmonica play any music?" demanded the White.
"No; the harmonica is out of order inside somehow, but perhaps my boy can mend it. And the knife isn't new—quite old, in fact—and its blade is broken at the end; still, it's a knife, and Wilhelm thinks he can trade it off for something else. And now for your adventures. What did your boy do with his sweetmeat, Little Blues? Did he eat it, or trade it?"
"It is eaten," replied the Blue Stockings cautiously.
"Eaten! Then of course he ate it. Why don't you speak out? If he ate it, say so. If he didn't, who did?"
"Well, nobody ate the whole of it, and my boy didn't eat any. It was divided between two persons—or rather, between one person and—and—a thing that is not a person."
"Bless me! What are you talking about? I never heard anything so absurd in my life. Persons, and things that are not persons," said the White Pair; "what do you mean?"