Tabitha at Ivy Hall, page 8 by Ruth Alberta Brown
<< Return to Title Details & Download9
er come. What made you so late? Did you know Dad had come home again? Haven't you something in your pocket to eat? I'm hungry as a wolf."
"Hush!" he said, slipping inside the door and closing it softly behind him. "Dad would be awfully mad if he knew I was here. I just got home. Had an errand across the pond after the store was closed. Here's a biscuit and some cheese. Why aren't you in bed? Aunt Maria said Dad sent you there at noon." As he spoke, the boy lifted the little sister to her feet, brushed out her crumpled dress, smoothed back her tangled hair and slipped the biscuit saved from his own supper into her eager hands.
"I did go to bed," mumbled Tabitha, with her mouth full of bread.
"You aren't undressed."
"Dad didn't say I had to undress, and he didn't say I had to stay in bed, either."
Tom grinned at her understanding of the law, but the darkness hid his face, so his amusement was lost to the small sister eating so ravenously.
"Did he lick you, Puss?"
"Nope. I thought he was going to, for he looked right mad, but I reckon I was so mad it wouldn't have hurt much."
"But it does hurt to have him whip. At least, it used to hurt me. Do be careful, Puss. I don't want him to begin whipping you. How did you make him so mad?"
The child briefly recounted the story of the morning's tribulations between bites of biscuit and cheese, growing so angry over her recital that the flood gates were opened again and she sobbed aloud in her tempest of grief.
"It's all on account of my horrid name," she told him. "I just can't be good when folks say such mean things. Joe Pomeroy is a sneak anyway, and I've been itching to lick him for a long, long time--ever since Sneed hit me with the whip he uses to drive the cows with."
"Did Sneed hit you with a whip?"
"Yes. Oh, Tom, I never meant to tell you that! Now you'll go and fight him and he will hurt you, 'cause he's so much bigger than you are, and then Dad will whale you for fighting. Th