Nell Speed

“ Sally Winn forgot to hold her heart and laughed like a girl at the jests.
"It will be fatal to sit down after such a dinner," declared Dee. "We had better go out and coast and jolt it down."
There was only one small sled, left from my childhood, but the attic was full of broken chairs, and in a few minutes the eager males had fashioned make-shift coasters out of old rockers and chair backs.
"They are not very elegant but they will slide down the hill, which is the main thing," said Wink, as he lay flat on his stomach and whizzed down the long hill to the spring. ”

“ Tucker should go to-night?" suggested Wink.
"No, no! 'Twould never do at all!" objected Father violently. "If Tucker goes to-night, I won't have a minute's peace all day to-morrow—What's more, young man," shaking his finger at Wink, "neither will you—I'll force you into service. Why, those little pickaninnies will stuff candy and nuts all night and lick the paint off the jumping-jacks and Noah's arks, and by morning they will be having forty million stomachaches. No, indeed, wait until morning. Let them eat the trash standing and they have a better chance to digest it." ”

“ They were evidently having the time of their lives.
"Drag the trunk away from the building!" shouted Dum above the noise made by 125 squealing, screaming girls and a raft of distracted servants, together with the rather tardy arrival of the village fire engine.
The building was now doomed. Nothing ever burns so brightly as a fireproof building when once it starts. It is like the fury of a patient man.
"Is every one out of the building?" called Dee.
"Where is Miss Plympton?" ”

“ Tucker took her by storm. He acted Santa Claus just as he had at Aunt Keziah's and Sally, I know, regretted that her education kept her from joining ranks with the believers.
"Did you ever see anybody look so like himself? I have never seen a Santa Claus before that did not have on an ugly false face—hideous painted things that wouldn't fool a chicken," Sally began with her accustomed volubility. "I can't quite make up my mind that you are not Santy—"
"Well, don't make up your mind to any such treason. I am Santy!" ”

“ VIRGINIA VERSUS CAROLINA.
What a day that Thanksgiving was! Could anything be more fun than to be sixteen ('most seventeen) ; to have devoted friends; good health; to be allowed to sleep until mid-day; to get up to a good breakfast luncheon; and by one o'clock to be on the streets of Richmond en route for the great event of the year: the football match between Virginia and Carolina? ”

“ Parker, girls. You just adore girls, don't you, Mr. Parker?"
Mr. Parker, who was in a measure the Beau Brummel of Richmond, assured us he did and immediately took stock of our charms, at least that was his air, as Mabel, with many flourishes, presented us. She was quite impressive in her manner of introducing Tweedles and Annie Pore, and I heard her whisper behind her hand that Annie was a "descendant of nobilities." She almost ignored me altogether, but finally brought me in as "little Miss Allison from the country," and pretended to have entirely forgotten Mary's name. ”

“ Since the summer we had with one accord turned up our hair. We felt that it added dignity to our years; but now was no time for dignity but for great simplicity and innocence.
As the breakfast gong sounded, I am sure in all Virginia there could not be found five more demure maidens than tripped punctually into the dining room. Miss Plympton looked sharply up as we came in, but we felt we had disarmed her with the very sweet bows we gave her and the gentle "good mornings." ”

“ Such excitement on the little station of Milton, usually so quiet and sedate! First came Dee carrying Brindle, wrapped in a plaid shawl, looking, as Zebedee said, like an emigrant baby, then Zebedee and Wink, with suit cases and great boxes and paper parcels; then Dum with more valises and more boxes and parcels.
I was astonished to see Mr. Reginald Kent [201] bringing up the rear. He, too, was almost completely concealed with baggage and bundles, but I could see his smiling, ruddy countenance above his load.
"Why, Mr. Kent, I saw Jo yesterday and he did not tell me you were coming!" ”

“ Not many young men would have thought of sparing a middle-aged, complaining cousin whose one attraction was her cooking. Just then Jo Winn came gliding up in his little cutter, ostensibly for the mail but in reality to catch a glimpse of Dee who was the one female I have ever seen the shy man at his ease with. Of course he was at his ease with me, having known me since I was a baby, but I somehow never think of myself as a female to make the males tremble. ”

“ Turning to the mystified conductor she continued, "He has so many cunning little tricks and we never know when he is going to get them off. He can go moo like a cow, and mew like a kitty, and can grunt just like a piggy wiggy," and what should that dog, with human intelligence, do but give a most astounding lifelike grunt. The conductor's grim mouth broke into a grin and we went off into such shouts of laughter that if Brindle had not been a very well-behaved person he would certainly have barked with us. ”

“ When the possibility of marrying again has ever come into my head, and I must confess that sometimes it does when I am lonesome, I can only think of some bright young girl as the one for me, some one near the age of Tweedles; and then I know that Tweedles would raise Cain. And no matter how fond they might have been of the girl beforehand, the moment they should get a suspicion that I am interested in her they would—well, they might smear her with cranberry sauce. ”

“ Miss Peyton never talked to you like a Dutch Uncle unless you needed it, while Miss Plympton never talked to you any other way.
"She makes me feel like an inmate of a detention home or some place where the criminally insane are sent," stormed Dee. "She makes out I have done things I never even thought of doing and has not got sense enough to know I never lie." ”

“ I don't like to sew on hooks any more than Miss Plympton herself would and that sneeze popped off two. She looked up from the chronological page of dates she had been hammering into us and said sternly: "Caro-ginia Tucker, that unseemly noise must stop." "Yessum!" I gasped, holding my nose about as Dee does Brindle when he tries to get away from her to eat some little dog up. I held on with all my might, but every one knows that sneezes never come singly. The other one is as sure to come out as murder. ”

“ This contraption certainly does tickle my nose;" and forthwith Santa Claus did explode into a regular Tucker sneeze, thereby bursting his belt and unpinning his tum-tum so that much of the work had to be done over.
"Now, Zebedee, stop!" commanded Dum. "You know perfectly well you do not have to sneeze so loud."
"All right, Miss Plympton," teased the offender, and gave another sneeze.
"We might just as well wait until he gets through," sighed Dee. "It always takes at least three to satisfy a Tucker." ”

“ We talked of Miss Peyton and how much we liked her, but since Miss Ball was a member of the faculty, we refrained from our criticisms of Miss Plympton, although we knew that Captain Leahy was dying to hear all about our latest scrapes and how we got out of them and what we had to say of our stern principal. She really was not nearly so stern as we gave her credit for, but we were nothing but girls and young people are always extreme in their opinions. Everybody is either perfectly lovely or perfectly horrid in their eyes. ”

“ CHRISTMAS EVE AT BRACKEN.
"Do all of you want to go to-morrow morning with Page and me to play Santa Claus to our poor neighbours?" asked Father at supper.
"Yes! Yes!" they chorused.
"I feel bad about all these little nigs who know I bring them the things and so they don't believe in Santa Claus at all. I always think that belief in Santa Claus is one of the perquisites of childhood. Sometimes I have been tempted to dress up and play Santy for them, but I believe they would know me. Docallison is seen too often to have any mystery about him." ”

“ All he had to do was to convert his berth into seats again, and in a jiffy he was out to usher us into a ship-shape apartment. He was a singularly orderly old man to be so charming. I do not think as a rule that very orderly persons are apt to be charming.
"Dum and I have to go to the station a minute," said Dee, just as though it were not three o'clock in the morning. ”

“ One of the peculiarities of boarding school is that if you are sick at all you are supposed to be too sick to eat. If you are really very bad off, so far gone you have to be put in the hospital, then you are fed up. If a girl skips a meal from indisposition, nothing is done about her food by the housekeeper, but if her roommate chooses to sneak some of her own supply up to the sufferer, although it is supposed to be against the rules to take any food from the table, at a time like that the infringement is winked at. ”

“ There is nothing very bad about creeping out of your warm bed at midnight and flying down a cold hall to a class room, where you will meet other girls just out of their warm beds and when there you will, through smothered giggles, eat burnt fudge made on a fire surreptitiously kindled behind the barn, when you were supposed to be piously engaged in darning stockings in the mending class. I don't know just what the fun is, but it certainly is fun. The best fun is scaring the night watchman, who is an Irishman and horribly superstitious. ”

“ We nearly died laughing at Mary Flannagan, who got quite huffy at Dum for being so scornful of Shorty's cotton handkerchief.
"It was a very appropriate, manly handkerchief and I don't think it was at all nice of Dum Tucker to say such mean things about it," fumed Mary, refusing to be comforted. "I hate a sissy boy who uses fine handkerchiefs. The kind Shorty has are good for so many things. He uses them to dust his shoes with and lots of other things." ”

“ The gymnasium, our ball room, was hung with paper pumpkin lanterns and papier-mâché skulls. "And in those holes where eyes did once inhabit" there shone forth lights giving a very weird effect indeed. The light was dim and the ghostly figures moving around would have frightened Mr. Ryan, the old night watchman, to death, I am sure. ”

“ Dee simply had to stop crying; in fact, she had stopped long before she felt that she should. She was forced to squeeze tears out to keep up the deception she had begun.
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive."
"You came mighty near making yourself your own grandmother, you got so mixed up," laughed Dum. "Brindle is so pedigreed I don't believe he would thank you for the bar sinister you put on him." ”

“ The laughter of some of the girls changed to weeping and about half the school had hysterics. Miss Plympton did not understand girls at all, but she understood them well enough to know that when once hysterics gets started in a crowd of girls there is no more stopping it than a stampede of wild cattle.
I hate sacrilege, but for the life of me I can't see why any one should think that any human being could get any good or spiritual strength for the day from listening to the tenth chapter of Nehemiah. ”

“ From Virginia Tucker to Mr. Jeffry Tucker.
Gresham, Oct. 15, 19—
Dearest Zebedee:
It gets worse and worse—We've had a whole month of it now and my demerits are much more numerous than my merits. I see no way of getting out of the hole I am in. Everything I do or don't do means just another black mark for me. Now who can help sneezing when a sneeze is crying out to be sneezed? And who can help making a face when a sneeze is imminent? Not a Tucker! You know yourself what a terrific noise you make when you sneeze and how you jump up and crack your heels together just as you explode. ”

“ Remember, though, we are merely twins and not triplets, nor yet quartettes. One alibi apiece is all we mean to furnish."
"And I," said Dee, as Dum paused for breath, "I! I don't mean for one instant to furnish an alibi or anything else. I was not out of the Gym after we unmasked at nine until ten when we went to our rooms. I am accustomed to having my word believed and I do not intend to prove anything one way or the other. A criminal is innocent until he is proven guilty, anyhow, and I will leave the matter entirely in your hands." Dee sat down with a crash and opened a book. ”

“ I like a joke as well as any one in the world, but to get in a mixup at boarding school because of a lot of boys is not in my line. It would be harder on Annie Pore than any of us because her father is so severe. He would never forgive her if she should get in a real scrape."
"But it isn't your fault. You were none of you aware of our intention of coming." [79]
"That makes not a whit of difference to Miss Plympton. She never believes us, no matter what we say. It is twenty-three minutes to nine and you had better grab Harvie and Shorty and beat it. ”

“ When, the year before, Annie and I had been sitting in the station waiting for the train to Gresham, Annie was as forlorn a specimen of little English girl as could be found in America, I am sure; and while I was not forlorn, just because [21] I never am forlorn as my interest in people is so intense that I am always sure something exciting is going to happen in a moment, no doubt I looked almost as forlorn as Annie, alone and friendless. ”

“ I looked for the other distinctive black V and saw that Annie was gliding around in the arms of the tall girl with whom I had danced, who had proven such an excellent partner.
Annie's cowl had slipped back and above her mask her pretty hair, the colour of ripe wheat, showed plainly, making no doubt of her identity. I looked back at the mysterious eyes and an almost uncontrollable desire to go off into hysterics [77] seized me. I suddenly remembered the hop at Willoughby and how I had sat out a dance with Wink White the night he proposed. The mystery was solved. ”

“ WHEN GHOST MEETS GHOST.
"Gee, but I'm hungry!" exclaimed Dum, as we trailed our sheeted forms up the stairs. "Did you ever see such slim eats in all your life? Why, my cake was cut so thin and my ice cream was so scant, they could not have passed muster even at a church fair!"
"Shh! Don't say a word, but I've got a box under my mattress. You let Annie and Mary know, while I see Jean Rice and Nancy Blair. We'll meet in the Gym at eleven. I believe we will be safe from old Mr. Ryan. He is sure to keep away from there as he knows that the skull lanterns are still up. ”

“ If you can hitch your Pegasus to a plough and 'bring new food for men to birth' you have done a better deed than if you had soared in the skies all the time in the wake of some great men. I consider O. Henry an unconscious philanthropist. ”