Under the Lilacs

"Ma says she is going over the house in a day or two, now it is warm and dry after the storm, and we may go with her. You know she wouldn't take us in the fall, cause we had whooping-cough, and it was damp there. Now we shall see all the nice things; won't it be fun?" observed Bab, after a pause. "Yes, indeed! Ma says there's lots of books in one room, and I can look at 'em while she goes round. May be I'll have time to read some, and then I can tell you," answered Betty, who dearly loved stories, and seldom got any new ones. "I'd rather see the old spinning-wheel up garret, and the big pictures, and the queer clothes in the blue chest. It makes me mad to have them all shut up there, when we might have such fun with them. I'd just like to bang that old door down!" And Bab twisted round to give it a thump with her boots. "You needn't laugh; you know you'd like it as much as me," she added, twisting back again, rather ashamed of her impatience. "I didn't laugh." "You did! Don't you suppose I know what laughing is?" "I guess I know I didn't." "You did laugh! How darst you tell such a fib?" "If you say that again I'll take Belinda and go right home; then what will you do?" "I'll eat up the cake." "No, you won't! It's mine, Ma said so; and you are only company, so you'd bet-ter behave or I won't have any party at all, so now." This awful threat calmed Bab's anger at once, and she hastened to introduce a safer subject. "Never mind; don't let's fight before the children. Do you know, Ma says she will let us play in the coach-house next time it rains, and keep the key if we want to." "Oh, goody! that's because we told her how we found the little window under the woodbine, and didn't try to go in, though we might have just as easy as not," cried Betty, appeased at once, for, after a ten years' acquaintance, she had grown used to Bab's peppery temper. "I suppose the coach will be all dust and rats and spiders, but I don't care. You and the dolls can be the passengers, and I shall sit up in front drive." "You always do. I shall like riding better than being horse all the time, with that old wooden bit in my mouth, and you jerking my arms off," said poor Betty, who was tired of being horse continually. "I guess we'd better go and get the water now," suggested Bab, feeling that it was not safe to encourage her sister in such complaints.