"Oh, Holland, please don't! _Please_ don't disgrace us," begged Mary, who always took his threats in earnest. "It would be too dreadful. I'll give you something nice if you'll promise not to."
"Oh, I don't know. I'll have to think about it."
Holland had no intention of carrying out his threats, but he kept Mary in a fever of anxiety all week, saying one hour that he'd think about her offer, and the next that she didn't have anything he cared for, and that he preferred the fun of tormenting the girls to anything she could give.
Joyce drew a star on the kitchen calendar, over the date on which they expected Lloyd to arrive; a big five-pointed red star. She rejoiced that it fell on a Wednesday, for by that time the washing and ironing would be out of the way. Her first experience in laundry-work made her look ahead to the coming Mondays as weekly bugbears. But the second was not so hard as the first. True to his promise, Jack did all the rubbing and wringing, getting up at daybreak to start the fire under the big wash-boiler out in the yard.
This morning, as he touched a match to the little pile of kindling, and fanned the blaze with his hat, the new pony, grazing in the alfalfa field, came up to the pasture-bars with a whinny, and put his head over the fence, as if to watch him.
"Oh, you think you'll boss this job, do you, Mr. Washington?" said Jack, who, in the short time he had had the pony, had grown as fond of him as if he were a person, and who talked to him as if he had human intelligence. "Well, you ought to take an interest in the washing, since that's the way you got your name, and the reason you are here. Wait till I get this boiler filled, and I'll bring you a lump of sugar."
Washington was a wiry little pony. He had a wicked light in his eyes, and was too free with his heels at times, but he had been raised as a household pet, and stood like a kitten while Jack rubbed his nose and fed him sugar.
"Take it easy while you can," said Jack. "If I have to work like a dog all morning on your account, to earn half the dollars that you cost us, I'll put you through your paces this afternoon to make up for it. You'll think that you are the Wild Mazeppa by the time we get back. Oh, you're such a nice old fellow!"