CHAPTER XVI
A Lively Afternoon
IT happened one day that Mrs. Milligan was obliged to spend a long afternoon at the dentist's, leaving Laura in charge of the house. Unfortunately, it happened, too, that this was the day when the sewing-society met and Mrs. Tucker had asked Bettie to stay home for the afternoon because the next to the youngest baby was ill with a croupy cold and could not go out of doors to the cottage. Devoted Jean offered to stay with her beloved Bettie, who gladly accepted the offer. Before going to Bettie's, however, Jean ran over to Dandelion Cottage to tell the other girls about it.
"Mabel," asked Jean, a little doubtfully, "are you quite sure you'll be able to turn a deaf ear if Laura should happen to bother you? I'm half afraid to leave you two girls here alone."
"You needn't be," said Mabel. "I wouldn't associate with Laura if I were paid for it. She isn't my kind."
"No," said Marjory, "you needn't worry a mite. We're going to sit on the doorstep and read a perfectly lovely book that Aunty Jane found at the library—it's one that she liked when she was a little girl. We're going to take turns reading it aloud."
"Well, that certainly ought to keep you out of mischief. You'll be safe enough if you stick to your book. If anything should happen just remember that I'm at Bettie's."
"Yes, grandma," said Marjory, with a comical grimace.
Jean laughed, ran around the house and squeezed through the hole in the back fence.
Half an hour later, lonely Laura, discovering the girls on their doorstep, amused herself by "sicing" the dog at them. Towser, however, merely growled lazily for 
Then Laura perched herself on one of the square posts of the dividing fence and began to sing in her high, rasping, exasperating voice, a song that was almost too personal to be pleasant. It had taken Laura almost two hours to compose it, some days previously, and fully another hour to commit it to memory, but she sang it now in an off-hand, hap-hazard way that led the girls to suppose that she was making it up as she went along. It ran thus:
"There's a lanky girl named Jean,
Who's altogether too lean.
Her mouth is too big.
And she wears a wig,
And her eyes are bright sea-green."
Of course it was quite impossible to read even a thrillingly interesting book with rude Laura making such a disturbance. If the girls had been wise, they would have gone into the house and closed the door, leaving Laura without an audience; but they were not wise and they were curious. They couldn't help waiting to hear what Laura was going to sing about the rest of them, and they did not need to wait long; Laura promptly obliged them with the second verse:
"There's another named Marjory Vale,
Who's about the size of a snail.
Her teeth are light blue—
She hasn't but two—
And her hair is much too pale."
Laura had, in several instances, sacrificed truth for the sake of rhyme but enough remained to injure the vanity of the subjects of her song very sharply. Marjory breathed quickly for a moment and flushed pink but gave no audible sign that she had heard. Laura, somewhat disappointed, proceeded:
"There's a silly young lass called Bet,
Thinks she's ev'rybody's sweet pet.
She slapped my brother,
Fibbed to my mother—
I know what she's going to get."
Mabel snorted indignantly over this injustice to her beloved Bettie and started to rise, but Marjory promptly seized her skirt and dragged her down. Laura, however, saw the movement and was correspondingly elated. It showed in her voice:
"But the worst of the lot is Mabel,
She eats all the pie she's able.
She's round as a ball.
Has no waist at all,
And her manners are bad at the table."
Marjory giggled. She had no thought of being disloyal, but this verse was certainly a close fit.
"You just let me go," muttered Mabel, crimson with resentment, and struggling to break away from Marjory's restraining hand. "I'll push her off that post."
"Hush!" said diplomatic Marjory, "perhaps there's more to the song."
But there wasn't. Laura began at the beginning and sang all the verses again, giving particular emphasis to the ones concerning Mabel and Marjory. This, of course, grew decidedly monotonous; the girls grew tired of the constant repetition of the silly song long before Laura did. There was something about the song, too, that caught and held their attention. Irresistibly attracted, held by an exasperating fascination, neither girl could help waiting for her own especial verse. But while this was going on, Mabel, with a finger in the ear nearest Laura, was industriously scribbling something on a scrap of paper.
As everybody knows, the poetic muse idoesn't always work when it is most needed, and Mabel was sadly handicapped at that moment. She was not satisfied with her hasty scrawl but, in the circumstances, it was the best she could do. Suddenly, before Marjory realised what was about to happen, Mabel was shouting back, to an air quite as objectionable as the one Laura was singing:
"There's a very rude girl named Laura,
Whose ways fill all with horror.
She's all the things she says we are;
All know this to their sorrow."
"Yah! yah!" retorted quick-witted Laura. "There isn't a rhyme in your old song. If I couldn't rhyme better'n that I'd learn how—come over and I'll teach you."
For an instant, Mabel looked decidedly crushed—no poet likes his rhymes disparaged. Laura, noting Mabel's crestfallen attitude, went into gales of mocking laughter and when Mabel looked at Marjory for sympathy Marjory's face was wreathed in smiles. It was too much; Mabel hated to be laughed at.
"I can rhyme," cried Mabel, springing to her feet and giving vent to all her grievances at once. "My table manners are good. I'm not fat. I've got just as much waist as you have."
"You've got more," shrieked delighted Laura.
Faithless Marjory, struck by this indubitable truth, laughed outright.
"You—you can't make Indian-bead chains," sputtered Mabel, trying hard to find something crushing to say. "You can't make pan-cakes. You can't drive nails."
"Yah," retorted Laura, who was right in her element, "you can't throw straight."
"Neither can you."
"I can—if I could find anything to throw I'd prove it."
Just at this unfortunate moment, a groceryman arrived at the Milligan house with a basketful of beautiful scarlet tomatoes. In another second, Laura, anxious to prove her ability, had jumped from the fence, seized the basket and, with unerring aim, was delightedly pelting her astonished enemy with the gorgeous fruit Mabel caught one full in the chest, and as she turned to flee, another landed square in the middle of her light blue gingham back; Marjory's shoulder stopped a third before the girls retreated to the house, leaving Laura, a picturesque figure on the high post, shouting derisively:
"Proved it, didn't I—Ki! I proved it."
Marjory, pleading that discretion was the better part of valour, begged Mabel to stay indoors; but Mabel, who had received, and undoubtedly deserved, the worst of the encounter, was for instant revenge. Rushing to the kitchen she seized the pan of hard little green apples that Grandma Pike had bequeathed the girls and flew with them to the porch.
Mabel's first shot took Laura by surprise and landed squarely between her shoulders. Mabel was surprised, too, because throwing straight was not one of her accomplishments. She hadn't hoped to do more than frighten her exasperating little neighbour.
Elated by this success, Mabel threw her second apple, which, alas, flew wide of its mark and caught poor unprepared Mr. Milligan, who was coming in at his own gate, just under the jaw, striking in such a fashion that it forced the astonished man to suddenly bite his tongue.
Nobody likes to bite his tongue. Naturally Mr. Milligan was indignant; indeed, he had every reason to be, for Mabel's conduct was disgraceful and the little apple was very hard. Entirely overlooking the fact that Laura, who had failed to notice her father's untimely arrival, was still vigorously pelting Mabel, who stood as if petrified on the cottage steps and was making no effort to dodge the flying scarlet fruit, Mr. Milligan shouted:
"See here, you young imps, I'll see that you're turned out of that cottage for this outrage. We've stood just about enough abuse from you. I don't intend to put up with any more of it."
Then, suddenly discovering what Laura, who had turned around in dismay at sound of her father's voice, was doing, angry Mr. Milligan dragged his suddenly crestfallen daughter from the fence, boxed her ears soundly, and carried what was left of the tomatoes into the house; for that particular basket of fruit had been sent from very far South and express charges had swelled the price of the unseasonable dainty to a very considerable sum.