"I bet you never did smoke repeatedly!"

Her manhood was challenged.

"I'll show you!" she retorted, grim about the lips.

With his knife he cut the evil thing in fair halves. The girl received
her portion with calmness, if not with gratitude, and lighted it from
the match he gallantly held for her. And so they smoked. The Merle twin
never smoked for two famous Puritan reasons--it was wrong for boys to
smoke and it made him sick. He eyed the present saturnalia with strong
disapproval. The admiration of the Wilbur twin--now forgetting his
ignominy--was frankly worded. Plainly she was no common girl.

"I bet you'll be all right in the big city," he said.

"Of course I will," said the girl.

She spat between her teeth with a fine artistry. In truth she was
spitting rather often, and had more than once seemed to strangle, but
she held her weed jauntily between the first and second fingers and
contrived an air of relish for it.

"Anyway," she went on, "it'll be better than here where I suffered so
terribly with everybody making the vilest scenes about any little thing
that happened. After they find it's too late they'll begin to wish
they'd acted kinder. But I won't ever come back, not if they beg me to
with tears streaming down their faces, after the vile way they acted;
saying maybe I could have a baby brother after Harvey D. got that