“I hate semolina,” he observed gloomily, “almost as bad as I hate rice.”
“And Vinolia, too--greasy stuff you smear on chapped legs.”
“And why,” demanded Chris, who was in a bold and captious mood, “should there be eight of ’em? Why can’t there be some boys?”
“I won’t have boys, I tell you,” Easter declared firmly. “Girls are far prettier.”
“_Are_ they?” asked Chris incredulously. “I’ve never seen any pretty ones.”
Instead of asking “Where are your eyes?” Easter said huffily, in life-like imitation of nurse: “That’s as it may be. Anyway they wear far prettier clothes.”
Easter looked down at her extremely short and faded navy-blue skirt, at her long legs stuck out in front of her, at her muddy boots, at the large hole in the knee of her stocking. Save for the said skirt she was dressed almost exactly like Chris, in muffin cap, reefer and brass buttons.
“Sometimes I do,” she maintained; “but anyway, Irene, Semolina, and Rosalind, and Majorca, and Minorca, and Vinolia, and Larola, and Salonica will all have lovely frocks, silk ninon, with sashes. Chris, they’ll be perfectly sweet, and we’ll make them walk two and two in front of us to church.”
“I tell you,” Chris declared, unmoved by this entrancing vision, “that I don’t _want_ so many daughters. I don’t like them, I don’t want ’em and I won’t have ’em.”
“Then,” Easter ejaculated in breathless tones that should have warned him, “I shan’t marry you.”
“I don’t care,” the callous Chris announced. “The country wants men. I heard my daddy say so the last time he was home. There’s far too many women as it is. They can’t fight.”
“Can’t they?” the indignant Easter exclaimed ironically, and giving Chris a vigorous and wholly unexpected push, rolled him down the steep bank and into the ditch with a mighty splash; and then, adding insult to injury, she dug her heels into the wet grass, and taking off with skill and surety, jumped over his prostrate body on to the road, whereupon she ran away, laughing derisively.
Chris got most uncommonly wet, for the bottom of the ditch was slimy and soft. Even after he had struggled to his feet they slipped about and sank in far over the tops of his boots. And when he did manage to scramble up the bank to the road, he certainly looked a deplorable object, covered with mud and green slime and with water oozing from every bit of him. He stamped his feet and rubbed them on the wet grass that bordered the road without much visible betterment.