"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.
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."