shrugged his shoulders.

"You look like one, but you're no good," he said.

"I can be just as bad as any boy!" she insisted. "I'll do whatever you
do; I'll do worse, I tell you. Dare me to do something!"

"You don't dare skate backward into the red drawing-room! There's too
much bric-a-brac."

She turned like a flash and was off, hopping and clattering down-stairs
on her single skate, and a moment later she whirled into the red
drawing-room backward and upset a Sang-de-boeuf jar, reducing the maid
to horrified tears and the jar to powder.

Howker strove in vain to defend his dining-room when Scott appeared on
one skate; but the breakfast-room and pantry were forcibly turned into
rinks; the twins swept through the halls, met and defeated their nurses,
Margaret and Betty, tumbled down into the lower regions, from there
descended to the basement, and whizzed cheerily through the kitchen,
waving two skateless legs.

There Mrs. Bramton attempted to buy them off with tribute in the shape
of cup-cakes.

"Sure, darlints, they do be starvin' yez," purred Mrs. Bramton. "Don't I
know the likes o' them? Now roon away quietlike an' ladylike----"

"Like a hen," retorted Scott. "I want some preserves."