A Flock of Girls and Boys | Page 3

now, Tilly, don't say that," cried Dora, in a funny little wheedling
tone, "don't now; you'll hurt some of our feelings, for we shall think
you mean one of us, and you can't mean that, Tilly dear,"--the

wheedling tone taking on a droll, merry accent,--"you can't, for you
know how independent and high-minded we all are,--how incapable of
such meanness!"
"I wouldn't trust this high-mindedness," retorted Tilly, wrinkling up her
forehead.
"Now, Tilly, you don't mean that,--you don't mean that you've come all
the way from naughty New York to find such dreadful faults in nice,
primmy New England. The very dogs here are above such things. Look
at Punch there making friends with that little plebeian yellow dog."
"And look at Dandy barking at everybody who isn't well dressed,"
laughed Tilly, pointing to a handsome collie, who was vigorously
giving voice to his displeasure at the approach of a workman in shabby
clothing.
The Robson girls and Will Wentworth joined in Tilly's laugh; but
Agnes Brendon, who could never see a joke, looked disgusted, and
glancing at the little yellow dog, asked petulantly,--
"Whose dog is it?"
"It belongs to the girl who sits at the corner table," answered Will
Wentworth, "and its name is Pete. I heard the girl call him this
morning."
"What a horrid, vulgar name!" exclaimed Agnes. "It suits the dog,
though; and the people, I suppose, are--"
"Oh, Agnes, look at that horrid worm on your dress!"
Agnes jumped up in a panic, screaming, "Where, where?"
Dora, bending down to brush off the smallest of small caterpillars,
whispered,--
"The girl who owns the yellow dog is in the other hammock. I just saw
her, and she can hear every word you say."

"I don't care if she does hear," said Agnes, without troubling herself to
lower her voice. "You needn't have frightened me with your horrid
worm story, just for that."
Will Wentworth, as he heard this, fell backward into his reclining
position, with an explosive laugh. The next minute he sprang out of the
hammock, and, tucking "Jack Hall" under his arm, was up and off,
giving a sidelong look as he went at the other hammock, which, though
only a few rods away, was half hidden by the foliage of the two
low-growing trees between which it hung. Meeting Tilly and the
Robson girls as he ran around the corner of the house, he said
breathlessly,--
"Look here; that girl must have heard everything that we've said."
"Well, there wasn't anything said that concerned her, until Agnes began
about the yellow dog; and I stopped that," said Dora, gleefully.
"She may be acquainted with the Pelhams,--how do we know?"
exclaimed Will, ruefully.
"The Pelhams!" cried Dora and Amy, in one breath.
"Yes, how do we know?" repeated Will.
"That girl who sits over at the corner table with that stuffy old woman,
acquainted with the Pelhams! Oh, Will, if Agnes could hear you!" cried
Dora, with a shout of laughter.
"Well, I can't see what there is to laugh at," broke in Will, huffily.
"Why shouldn't she and the stuffy old woman, as you call her, know the
Pelhams? She's a nice-looking girl, a first-rate looking girl. What's the
matter with her?"
"Matter? I don't know that anything is the matter, except that she
doesn't look like the sort of girl who would be an acquaintance of the
Pelhams. She doesn't look like their kind, you know. She wears the
plainest sort of dresses,--just little straight up and down frocks of

brown or drab, or those white cambric things,--they are more like
baby-slips than anything; and her hats are just the same,--great flat
all-round hats, not a bit of style to them; and she's a girl of fourteen or
fifteen certainly. Do you suppose people of the Pelhams' kind dress like
that?"
Will gave a gruff little sound half under his breath, as he asked
sarcastically,--
"How do people of the Pelham kind dress?"
"Oh, like Dora and Amy, and especially like Agnes,--in the height of
the fashion, you know," Tilly cried laughingly.
"Now, Tilly," expostulated Dora, "neither Amy nor I overdress. We
wear what all girls of our age--girls who are almost young ladies--wear,
and I'm sure you wear the same kind of things."
"Not quite, Dora. I'll own, though, I would if I could; but there's such a
lot of us at home that the money gives out before it goes all 'round,"
said Tilly, frankly, yet rather ruefully.
"I'm sure you look very nice," said Dora, politely. Amy echoed the
polite remark, while Will, eying the three with an attempt at a critical
estimate, thought to himself, "They don't look a bit nicer than that girl
at the corner table."
But Will was too wise to give utterance to this thought. He