ick's. Only Dick said--"

"Never mind what Dick said." Mrs. Kate thrust the bread toward him, half
buttered.

"Dick's mad, I guess. He's mad at Ford, too."

Buddy regarded his mother gravely over the slice of bread.

"First I've heard of it," Ford remarked lightly. "I think you must be
mistaken, old-timer."

But Buddy never considered himself mistaken about anything, and he did
not like being told that he was, even when the pill was sweetened with
the term "old-timer." He rolled his eyes at Ford resentfully.

"Dick is mad! He got mad when you galloped over where Jo's red ribbon
was hanging onto a bush. I saw him a-scowling when you rolled it up and
put it in your shirt pocket. Dick wanted that ribbon for his bridle; and
you better give it to him. Jo ain't your girl. She's Dick's girl. And
you have to tie the ribbon of your bestest girl on your bridle. That's
why," he added, with belated gallantry, "I tie my own mamma's ribbons on
mine. And," he returned with terrible directness to the real issue,
"Jo's Dick's girl, 'cause he said so. I heard him tell Jim Felton she's
his steady, all right--and you are his girl, ain't you, Jo?"

His mother had tried at first to stop him, had given up in despair, and
was now sitting in a rather tragic calm, waiting for what might come of
his speech.

Josephine might have saved herself some anxious moments, if she had been
so minded; perhaps she would have been minded, if she had not caught
Ford's eyes fixed rather intently upon her, and sensed the expectancy in
them. She bit her lip, and then she laughed.

"A man shouldn't make an assertion of that sort," she said quizzically,
in the direction of Buddy--though her meaning went straight across the
table to another--"unless he has some reason for feeling very sure."

Buddy tried to appear quite clear as to her meaning. "Well, if you are
Dick's girl, then you better make Ford give that ribbon--"

"I have plenty of ribbons, Buddy," Josephine interrupted, smiling at him
still. "Don't you want one?"

"I tie my own mamma's ribbons on my bridle," Buddy rebuffed. "My mamma
is my girl--you ain't. You can give your ribbons to Dick."

"Mamma won't be your girl if you don't stop talking so much at the
table--and elsewhere," Mrs. Kate informed him sternly, with a glance of
trepidation at the others. "A little boy mustn't talk about grown-ups,
and what they do or say."

"What can I talk about, then? The boys talk about their girls all th