"Nope; it's shut."
"Well, first you'll have to dig out a big square place, an' pile snow
all round the edge. I'll get out o' here somehow b' the time you get
that done; then we'll run it full of water. 'N after that it'll freeze."
"Where c'd we get the water?" inquired Doris, with an unbelieving sniff.
"Mother wouldn't let us get it in the kitchen."
"Out of our hose pipe," said Master Stanford grandly. The Brewsters
owned no hose, and this fact was a perpetual source of grievance in
summer time. "I'll run her right under the hedge into your yard,"
continued the proprietor of the hose generously, "an' let her swizzle!"
"Oh--my!" gasped the small Brewsters in excited chorus.
"Well; are you goin' to do it?"
Carroll shook his head. "We promised mother we wouldn't get wet," he
observed with an air of superior virtue. "'N we always mind our mother,
don't we, Doris?--at least I do. Doris doesn't always. But she's a
girl."
Master Stanford cackled with derision. "Aw--you're a terrible good boy,
aren't you?" he crowed. "My father says you're a reg'lar prig. He says
he'd larrup me, if I was always braggin' 'bout bein' so good the way you
do. He says I haven't anythin' to brag of. Course if you're 'fraid of
your mother----"
Doris pirouetted off across the yard with a flirt of her short skirts.
"We aren't afraid, smarty!" she cried, her pink chin high in air. "An'
we aren't any gooder an' you are, Robbie Stanford--at least I'm not; so
there! Come on, Carroll; let's make a skatin' rink."
Hard labour with two small snow-shovels produced the semblance of a
square enclosure bounded by uneven ridges of soft snow. Mrs. Brewster
glancing out of the window at her darlings was pleased to observe their
red cheeks and the joyous enthusiasm with which they were pursuing their
self-imposed task.
"Dear little souls!" she thought, "how little it takes to keep them
happy." Then she became absorbingly busy at her machine in the task of
double-stitching the seams of the baby's rompers.
In the meanwhile young Robert Stanford had been released from durance
vile by the kind-hearted Annie, whose warm Irish heart had reproached
her for her fit of bad temper.
"Sure an' yez didn't mean to hit me eye; did yez, now?" she inquired, as
she poked her broad red face into the room.
"Naw; course I didn't," the incarcerated one ingratiatingly assured her.
"Say, Annie, c'n I have four cookies?"
"Oh, go 'way wid yez; four's too many entirely; I'll give ye wan wid a
clip over yer ear."
"No; honest, I ain't goin' to eat 'em all. I want one for Carroll an'
Doris an' two for me."
"An' it's the generous young one he is entirely," laughed Annie. "Come
on down an' I'll put yer coat on, and mind yez don't get into no more
mischief or I'll be afther tellin' yer mother; thin you'll get a taste
of the paddle."
"I'll give you a whole lot of my candy, Annie," said the boy earnestly,
"if you'll tell mother I was awful good. Will you?"
"'Awful' it was, all right," giggled Annie; "but if I was to say you was
good I'd have to burn in purgatory for me sins. I'll say nothin'."
"Where's purgatory, Annie?" inquired the young person after a thoughtful
silence.
"It's a warrum place entirely where you'll find yourself some day, I'm
thinkin', if yez meddle too much in my kitchen," said Annie darkly.
"Here's your cookies; now g'wan wid yez an' don't ye be afther botherin'
me no more."
It was a matter which required concerted effort to uncoil the heavy
hose, attach it to the water pipe and lift the nozzle to the level of
the window; but it was accomplished at last through the united efforts
of the two boys ably assisted by Doris, who was all excitement at the
prospect of sliding on a real ice pond in her own yard.
"I guess our daddy'll be s'prised when he sees us goin' around like
lightnin' on reg'lar ice," she said. "He's got skates, our daddy has,
an' he c'n skate like everythin', our daddy can."
"Pooh! that's nothin'," retorted Master Stanford; "my father c'n beat
your father all holler. He's a whole lot taller 'n your father, an' our
house is higher 'n yours, too."
"It's p'liter not to brag," said Doris, ignoring her own deflections
from civility. "Oh, my, look at the water spurting out of that teeny,
weeny hole! It's just like a fountain."
The two boys were laboriously dragging the heavy hose across the yard,
and in the process other holes appeared through which the water hissed
and gurgled with increasing force.
"I don't care," the proprietor of the hose assured them loftily. "It's
an' ol' thing anyway. We're goin' to have a great long new one nex'
summer; then maybe we'll give you this one. My father's so rich he don't
care. Now I'll poke the nozzle through the hedge an' let her swizzle.
Get out o' the way, Doris; I don't care if I do get wet."
Ten minutes later Mrs. Stanford, rosy and cheerful, after her brisk walk
in the winter sunshine, appeared on the scene. "What are you doing,
kiddies?" she inquired pleasantly; then in a more doubtful tone. "What
_are_ you doing? Why, Robbie!"
"We're jus' makin' a skatin' rink, and the ol' hose leaks like thunder,"
explained her son, employing a simile he had heard his father use the
day before, and which he had considered particularly manly and
admirable.
"Robert! you are soaked to the skin--and so is Carroll. Go right into
the house. What do you mean by being so naughty?"
"You didn't say I couldn't take the hose," sulked the boy, surveying his
parent from under lowering brows.
"Go in the house, sir; I'll attend to you presently," said his mother
sternly.
"Oh, please; I'll be good! I didn't--mean--to," whined the child.
"Carroll an' Doris, they wanted a skatin' rink, an' I----"
Mrs. Stanford stooped to turn off the water. "Go home at once," she said
to her neighbour's children. "And you, Robert, go up to the bathroom and
take off your wet clothing." Her pretty young face was flushed with
anger. "I never saw such dreadful children!" she murmured wrathfully.
"My, but she's mad!" whispered Carroll, looking after the slim, erect
figure, "it wasn't our fault their ol' hose leaked."
"I guess our mother'll be some mad, too," said Doris doubtfully; "that
water spurted all over my leggins; an' now I guess it's freezing."
The two walked slowly across the yard, ploughing through the rapidly
congealing slush, which was the disappointing outcome of two hours of
hard work.
"I don't like Robbie Stanford one bit," said Doris disgustedly. "He's
always getting us into mischief."
"I said we ought not to get wet," Carroll reminded her eagerly. "Don't
you remember I did? An' you said----"
"I don't like you either," pursued the little girl stonily. "I don't
b'lieve I like boys _a'tall_; so there!"
"I'm all wet," she announced to her mother, "an' Carroll's wetter 'an I
am; an'--we--we're--both--c-cold!"
It was characteristic of Elizabeth that she thoroughly dried and warmed
the children before asking any questions. Then despite their dismayed
protests she put them both to bed. "You disobeyed me," she told them,
"and now you'll have to stay in your beds till to-morrow morning. I'll
explain to your father. Of course he'll be disappointed not to see you
at dinner; but I can't help that."
A period of depressing silence followed during which both children
caught the distant sounds of passionate and prolonged crying from the
neighbouring house.
"It's Robbie," said Carroll in an awed whisper; "his mother's whipping
him with that butter-paddle o' hers. She does that when he's awful bad."
"I'd bite her!" murmured Doris between her clenched teeth.
"I'd--I'd--scratch her!" She burst into excited tears. "I'd just--hate
my mother if she--if she hurt me like that!"
"Pooh! Rob don't care so very much," Carroll assured her; "he says he
hollers jus' as loud as he can so his mother'll stop quicker. I s'pose,"
he continued after a thoughtful pause, "Robbie'll be up to dinner jus'
the same, an' we'll be here eatin' bread and milk."