A Flock of Girls and Boys

"Well, I never heard of them! Why should I? What have they done, pray tell, that everybody should know of them?"

"'Done'? I don't know as they've done anything. It's what they are. They are very rich and aristocratic people. Why, the Pelhams belong to one of the oldest families of Boston."

"What do I care for that?" said Tilly, tipping her head backward until it bumped against the wall of the house with a sounding bang, whereat Dora Robson gave a little giggle and exclaimed,--

"Mercy, Tilly, I heard it crack!"

Then another girl giggled,--it was another of the Robsons,--Dora's Cousin Amy; and after the giggle she said saucily,--

"Tilly's head is full of cracks already. I think we'd better call her 'Crack Brain;' we'll put it C.B., for short."

"You'd better call her L.H.,--'Level Head,'" a voice--a boy's voice--called out here.

The group of girls looked at one another in startled surprise. "Who--what!" Then Dora Robson, glancing over the piazza railing, exclaimed,--

"It's Will Wentworth. He's in the hammock! What do you mean, Willie, by hiding up like that, right under our noses, and listening to our secrets?"

"Hiding up? Well, I like that! I'd been out here for half an hour or more when you girls came to this end of the piazza."

"What in the world have you been doing for an hour in a hammock? I didn't know as you could keep still so long. Oh, you've got a book. Let me see it."

"You wouldn't care anything about it; it's a boy's book."

"Let me see it."

Will held up the book.

"Oh, 'Jack Hall'!"

"Of course, I knew you wouldn't care anything for a book that's full of boy's sports," returned Will.

"I know one girl that does," responded Dora, laughing and nodding her head.

"Who is she?" asked Will, looking incredulous.

"'T ain't me," answered Dora, more truthfully than grammatically.

"No, I guess not; and I guess you don't know any such girl."

Dora wheeled around and called, "Tilly, Tilly Morris! Come here and prove to this conceited, contradicting boy that I'm telling the truth."

"Oh, it's Tilly Morris, eh?" sung out Will.

"Yes," answered Tilly, turning and looking down at the occupant of the hammock; "I think 'Jack Hall' is the jolliest kind of a book. I've read it twice."

Will jerked himself up into a sitting posture, as he ejaculated in pleased astonishment,--

"Come, I say now!"

"Yes," went on Tilly; "I think it's one of the best books I ever read,--that part about the boat-race I've read over three or four times."

"Well, your head is level," cried Will, sitting up still straighter in the hammock, and regarding Tilly with a look of respect.

"Because I don't care anything for Boston's grand folks and do care for 'Jack Hall'?" laughed Tilly.

"Yes, that's about it," responded Will, with a little grin. "I'm so sick and tired," he went on, "hearing about 'swells' and money. The best fellow I know at school is quite poor; and one of the worst of the lot is what you'd call a swell, and has no end of money."

"There are all kinds of swells, Master Willie. Why, you know perfectly well that you belong to the swells yourself," retorted Dora.

"I don't!" growled Will.

"Well, I should just like to hear what your cousin Frances would say to that."

"Oh, Fan!" cried Will, contemptuously.

"If you don't think much of the old Wentworth name--"

"I do think much of it," interrupted Will. "I think so much of it that I want to live up to it. The old Wentworths were splendid fellows, some of 'em; and all of 'em were jolly and generous and independent. There wasn't any sneaking little brag and snobbishness in 'em. They 'd have cut a fellow dead that had come around with that sort of stuff;" and sixteen-year-old Will nodded his head with an emphatic movement that showed his approval of this trait in his ancestors.

Dora looked at him curiously; then with a faint smile she said,--

"Your cousin Frances is so proud of those old Wentworths. She's often told me how grandly they lived, and she's so pleased that her name Frances is the name of one of the prettiest of the Governor's wives."

"Yes; and one of the prettiest, and I dare say one of the best of 'em, was a servant-girl in Governor Benning Wentworth's kitchen, and he married her out of it. Did Fan ever tell you that?" and Will chuckled.

Amy Robson stared at Will with amazement as she exclaimed,--

"Well, I never saw such a queer boy as you are,--to run your own family down."