"I know I'm just going to de-_test_ that Miss Pepperpot!" she exclaimed. "I--I could throw this old history at her--I just could!"
"But you couldn't hit her, Tess," Dot observed placidly. "You know you couldn't."
"Because you can't throw anything straight--no straighter than Sammy Pinkney's ma. I heard her scolding Sammy the other day for throwing stones. She says, 'Sammy, don't you let me catch you throwing any more stones.'"
"I don't know," Dot replied reflectively. "But he says to her: 'What'll I do if the other fellers throw 'em at me?' 'Just you come and tell me, Sammy, if they do,' says Mrs. Pinkney."
"Well?" queried Tess, as her sister seemed inclined to stop.
"I didn't see what good that would do, myself," confessed Dot. "Telling Mrs. Pinkney, I mean. And Sammy says to her: 'What's the use of telling you, Ma? You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn!' _I_ don't think _you_ could fling that hist'ry straight at Miss Pepperpot, Tess."
"Huh!" said Tess, not altogether pleased. "I _feel_ I could hit her, anyway."
"Maybe Aggie could learn you the names of those sov-runs----"
"'Sovereigns'!" exclaimed Tess. "For pity's sake, get the word right, child!"
Dot pouted and Tess, being in a somewhat nagging mood--which was entirely strange for her--continued:
"And don't say 'learn' for 'teach.' How many times has Ruthie told you that?"
"I don't care," retorted Dorothy Kenway. "I don't think so much of the English language--or the English sov-er-reigns--so now! If folks can talk, and make themselves understood, isn't that enough?"
"It doesn't seem so," sighed Tess, despondent again as she glanced at the open history.
"Oh, I tell you what!" cried Dot, suddenly eager. "You ask Neale O'Neil. I'm sure _he_ can help you. He teached me how to play jack-stones."
Tess ignored this flagrant lapse from school English, and said, rather haughtily:
"Oh, my! _I_ would," Dot replied, her eyes big and round. "I'd ask anybody if I wanted to know anything very bad. And Neale O'Neil's quite the nicest boy that ever was. Aggie says so."
"Ruth and I don't approve of boys," Tess said loftily. "And I don't believe Neale knows the sovereigns of England. Oh! look at those men, Dot!"
Dot squirmed about on the bench to look out on Parade Street. An erecting gang of the telegraph company was putting up a pole. The deep hole had been dug for it beside the old pole, and the men, with spikes in their hands, were beginning to raise the new pole from the ground.