"Well, will you?"
"Will I? Why, of course I will!" Willie raised his voice and screwed up his face into a tight little knot of impatience and disgust. "Haven't I been telling you that for half an hour? You are the dumbest ox sometimes! Why, do you suppose I'd ask you to help me if I hadn't expected to share with you? You must think I'm an awful tightwad!"
Margery bent her head humbly under this tirade. She had nothing more to say, no defense to utter. By her unwomanly persistence she had very clearly lost whatever admiration and respect Willie Jones might once have felt for her. But – but – but she was in for half the profits!.. Women are so prone nowadays to prefer some petty material gain to the grand old-fashioned whatchemaycallit.
"I think we're going to get our two full quarts," Margery remarked amiably. Of course she was amiable. She had every reason to be amiable.
Willie Jones, who by this time had fallen silent, made no comment.
"Don't you think so?" Margery pursued sweetly.
"Huh!" grunted Willie Jones.
When the tin pail was about full an accident happened to Margery. She stepped into something soft and clayey, and the next instant, seeing what it was, she started off by leaps and bounds, crying out the shrill warning: "Run, Willie, run! Bumble bees! I stepped on a bumble bee nest!"
A young gravedigger – if it be correct to call the offspring of an old gravedigger a young gravedigger – caught sight of the poachers just at this moment, and, shouting out, "Hey, there! You!" started toward them down the knoll. The incredible speed with which the poachers fled seemed to give the young gravedigger an erroneous idea of the fear that his presence inspired. There was small likelihood of his overtaking them before they reached the safety of the other side of the fence, but they seemed to him so little to realize this that, for the mere pleasure of pursuit, the young gravedigger pounded on, brandishing his arms and roaring his threats. By the time Margery and Willie made the fence they had so far outdistanced the bees that Willie had courage to face about and shout back defiance to all threats and to show his contempt for the whole race of gravediggers by pointing his thumb to his nose and wriggling his fingers in that same derisive and, it must be conceded, effective manner already mentioned. Although still at a considerable distance, the young gravedigger caught the full meaning of the insult and almost exploded with rage.
"You – you little – " he began. But he did not finish. They saw him stop suddenly, look up, and then, flinging his arms over his head, rush madly back the way he had just come.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Willie Jones shouted, hopping up and down in the intensity of his enjoyment. "Margery, do you see him? The bees are after him! Jiminy! Jiminy! Jiminy!"
Willie Jones lay down on the ground and rolled and kicked and plucked up handfuls of grass in an effort to work off the exuberance of his joy.
"Oh!" he gasped weakly, as the humor of the situation finally expended itself. "Isn't that the funniest thing you ever saw?"
As Margery made no answer, he turned, suddenly conscious that from the start she had not been sharing his transports.
"Why, what's the matter, Margery?"
There was a pained expression on Margery's face and she was panting.
"I'm stung," she murmured.
Willie Jones did not have to ask "Where?" for the middle finger of one hand was already standing straight out, swollen and red.
"I'm awfully sorry, Margery, honest I am. Put some mud on it. That'll help some."
"I don't see any mud," Margery panted, looking hopelessly over the green meadow.
"Can't we make some quick enough?" Willie asked, digging his heel into the turf. "Now, Margery, spit on this… Aw, that's not enough. Watch me."
By their united efforts they succeeded in mixing a mud plaster large enough to cover the wound.
"There now, does that feel better?"
"I don't know, Willie. Maybe it does. But do you know – do you know – I – I think I'm getting sick."
"Oh, no, you're not. You just think you are. Brace up now and you'll feel all right." Then, by way of changing the subject and giving praise where praise was due, he added: "That was dandy of you not dropping any berries when the bees chased us. There are not quite two quarts, but don't you care. I think my mother'll count them for two."
But Margery was not to be diverted.
"Oh, Willie," she groaned, "I feel awful sick! Oh, if I could only thr'up!"
"Well, thr'up if you want to," Willie advised. "There's no one around here, and I won't look, honest I won't."
Margery shook her head sadly.
"I can't do it alone. I got to have hot water and things. Come on. We better go home or I think I'll die. Oh, if my head just didn't ache so! Maybe you better lend me your cap, Willie. Thanks. I suppose that'll help my head some, but I don't believe it will. Oh, Willie, do you know what I wish?"
"What?"
"Oh, I do wish I had never et a single banana! And I knew all the time I oughtn't to eat so many, I knew it just as well! Oh, Willie, isn't it turrible the way a person does a thing even when they know they oughtn't to?"
All the way home Willie had very little to say, but he listened politely as Margery talked on and on, punctuating her sad moralizings with long labored breaths and weary headshakes.
"And then afterwards, Willie, if I had only sat still as Effie told me to, I might have got off all right. But no, I had to come racing off here in the hot sun and I knew I oughtn't to, and then I went into the blackberry patch and I knew I hadn't any right to, and all I got to say is, it's a wonder a hundred bees didn't sting me instead of one.."
Willie looked at her curiously.
"Do you think you got stung because you picked those berries?"
"I just know that was why."
"Well, the gravedigger was getting it worse than you, and I guess he had a right to be there, hadn't he?"
For a moment Margery was stumped, but only for a moment.
"Yes, Willie," she said simply, "he had a right to chase us, but – he had no right to use such turrible langwedge. I'm not one bit surprised he got stung for it. You heard him yourself, Willie, you know you did."
Yes, Willie had heard him, and Margery was certainly right in intimating that the young gravedigger was exceptionally fluent in cuss words. With cause and effect so clearly demonstrated, Willie Jones had no further argument against Margery's conception of a prompt and well-deserved judgment. He was silent a moment, then went back to something else.
"So you think you oughtn't to have gone into the blackberry patch at all?"
"Why, of course I think so! I know so! Wasn't there a sign up not to? Why, taking blackberries when there's a sign up is not much better than downright stealing!"
"H'm," murmured Willie Jones with interest. Then after a pause he said: "Now, Margery, listen here: if you feel as bad about it as all that I tell you what I'll do – I'll take your share of blame for the berries. I'll tell everybody that I picked 'em all."
Margery turned heavy eyes on her companion and, sick as she was, saw through his little scheme at once. He was offering her a chance to give up her share of tainted profits.
"Thank you, Willie, thank you very much, but I guess I'll just tell the truth about the berries. It wouldn't be fair to you if I didn't."
Willie protested that it would be all right, but Margery was firm.
"No, Willie, I did pick half of them, that's all there is about it, and you mustn't pretend I didn't… Oh, oh, I wonder do I look as sick as I feel?"
Willie scanned her colorless face and, under the delusion that sick folk desire to look as nearly well as possible, said: "No, you're looking all right." The expression of indignant protest which his cheerful remark excited showed him his mistake, and he added, rather lamely: "You do look kind of thin, though."
"Thin!" Margery snorted. "Why, Willie Jones, if you were one-half as sick as I am this minute, why, you – you'd be dead long ago! O-oh! My head, and my stummick, and my finger, too! But my finger's not as bad as my head and my stummick. Oh, how I wish that Effie was here!"
"Effie?"
"Yes, Effie. She'd have me well in two minutes."
"I hope you don't think we'll find Effie when we get home."
"Why not?"
"Don't you remember what she said when we started out? Don't you know she said she was going to her brother's house because we called her a hired girl?"
For the moment Margery had forgotten, and now, at this sudden reminder, she was so overcome she had to sit down for a few moments and rest on the curbstone.
"Oh," she groaned, "you don't think she really meant it, do you, Willie? What'll I do if she's not there? There's no one else knows how to make me thr'up like Effie! She always does it for me. Why, I'll just die, I know I will, if she's not there!"
"I'm sorry, Margery, but even if she is there, I don't think she'll do anything for you this time. She's pretty mad at both of us."
"Willie Jones," Margery said, with sudden determination, "you've got to do something. You've just got to!"