"Dick, how many are twenty-seven and eight?"
The girl looked up, with narrow eyes and puckered brow, from the
butcher's book, which she was laboriously "checking," at the boy who
leaned back on the window seat picking out a tune on a banjo.
"Thirty-nine," he replied lazily but promptly, without ceasing to peck,
peck at the strings.
She nodded her thanks, and traveled slowly up the column, counting with
the end of her pencil and jotting down the result with a perplexed face.
They were brother and sister, Nell and Dick Lorton, and they made an
extremely pretty picture in the sunny room. The boy was fair with the
fairness of the pure Saxon; the girl was dark--dark hair with the sheen
of silk in it, dark, straight brows that looked all the darker for the
clear gray of the eyes which shone like stars beneath them. But the eyes
were almost violet at this moment with the intensity of her mental
effort, and presently, as she raised them, they flashed with a mixture
of irritation and sweet indignation.
"Dick, if you don't put that banjo down I'll come over and make you.
It's bad enough at most times; but the 'Old Folks at Home' on one
string, while I'm trying to check this wretched book, is intolerable,
and not to be endured. Put it down, Dick, or I'll come over and smash
both of you!"
He struck a chord, an exasperating chord, and then resumed the more
exasperating peck, peck.
"'Twas ever thus," he said, addressing the ceiling with sad reproach.
"Women are born ungrateful, and continue so. Here am I, wasting this
delightful afternoon in attempting to soothe a sister's savage breast by
sweet strains of heavenly music, and she----"
With a laugh, she sprang from her seat and went for him. There was a
short and fierce struggle, during which the banjo was whirled hither and
thither; then he got her down on the floor, sat upon her, and
deliberately resumed pecking out the "Old Folks at Home."
"Let me get up, Dick! Let me get up this instant!" she cried indignantly
and breathlessly. "The man's waiting for the book. Dick, do you hear?
I'll pinch you--I'll crumple your collar! I'll burn that beast of a
banjo directly you've gone out. Dick, I'm sure you're hurting me
seriously. Di-ck! I've got a pain! Oh, you wait until you've gone out!
I'll light the fire with that thing! Get up!"
Without a change of countenance, as if he were deaf to her entreaties
and threats, he tuned up the banjo, and played a breakdown.