ver_."

"But why," said Muffie, who was only six, and easily bewildered by
words, "why can't we do like always and ever when we come up here?"

"Why, indeed!" said Pauline with much bitterness.

Max, the only son of the Judge and aged just four, had a clear way of
his own of arriving at the cause of various effects.

"Wish a late big lecipice would fall on Anna," he said.

"Really, Max," said Lynn, whose unspent penny was burning a hole in her
temper, "you are getting too big to talk like that. Late big lecipice!
Say, _great big precipice._"

"I did," said Max indignantly,--"I'll push you off the gate in a
minute."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Oh, wouldn't I?"

"If you move your foot I'll jerk you off."

"Now, don't begin that," said Pauline, "you'll make him cough
again,--let him alone, Lynn."

"Well, he mustn't say he'll push me off," said Lynn. "I'm only trying to
teach him to talk prop'ly. This morning he asked Larkin to come and look
at his lee lowing in the lound. And I had to explain that he meant 'tree
growing in the ground.'"

Max was red with anger.

"I didn't say that," he shouted, "I said plain's anything lee lowing in
the _lound._"

He sent each of the difficult words from his mouth with a snap, as if he
were discharging them from a pistol that jammed.

But Lynn jeered again.

He could not jerk her from the gate, though he tried hard; eight years
old can effect a much firmer lodgment than four years. He sheltered
himself behind his weakness.

"You'll make _me_ cough in a minute," he said, and began to draw in his
breath.

"You'll make me cough," said Lynn.

"I cough worser than you," insisted Max.

"You don't,--I get _much_ redder," said Lynn.

"I go purple, Miss Bibby says so," said Muffie complacently.

"I go nearly lack in the face," said Max.

It was possible that Pauline, who being ten was always superior, would
have laid claim herself to some still darker shade of complexion but
that a diversion occurred at the moment.

One or two people carrying golf clubs had passed along the monotonous
road during the morning and Max had longed to be a caddie. Once a
woodcutter had gone along with his axe over his shoulder and Lynn had
been moved to recite--to the disgust of the others--"Woodman, spare that
tree." And once Larkin had flashed past on horseback, Howie tearing
along not far behind, it having come to their ears five minutes before
that a cottage far away through the bush was