“You’ll have to be back in time to help get supper, won’t you?” Delia asked Mary Elizabeth pointedly.
Again Mary Elizabeth was unperturbed, save for that faint flush.
“Yes,” she said, “I will. So let’s hurry.”
We ran toward the school ground, by common consent the destination for short walks, with supper imminent, as Prospect Hill was dedicated to real walks, with nothing pressing upon us.
“It says ‘Quick, quick, quick, quick,’” Mary Elizabeth cried, dragging a stick on the pickets of, so to say, a passing fence.
“Why, that’s nothing but the stick noise hitting on the fence noise,” Delia explained loftily.
“Which makes the loudest noise—the stick or the fence?” Mary Elizabeth put it to her.
“Why—” said Delia, and Mary Elizabeth and I both laughed, like little demons, and made our sticks say, “Quick, quick, quick, quick” as far as the big post, that was so like a man standing there to stop us.
“See the poor tree. The walk’s stepping on its feet!” cried Mary Elizabeth when we passed the Branchett’s great oak, that had forced up the bricks of the walk. (They must already have been talking of taking it down, that hundred-year oak, to preserve the dignity of the side-walk, for they did so shortly after.)
This time it was Margaret Amelia who revolted.