They'd have drownded you as soon as they seen it was a girl.

But boys they keep." "I don't listen to gossip," said the girl, loftily.
"And besides," continued the inquisitor, "if you think boys are such bad ones, what you trying to be one for, and be Ben Blunt and all like that ?" "You're too young to understand if I told you," she replied with a snappish dignity.
The Merle twin was regretting these asperities.

His eyes clung constantly to the lemon and candy.
"She can be Ben Blunt if she wants to," he now declared in a voice of authority.

"I bet she'll have a better moustache than that old Miss Murphy's." "Murtree," she corrected him, and spoke her thanks with a brightening glance.

"Here," she added, proffering her treasure, "take a good long suck if you want to." He did want to.