"Pleeze, Mis' Miller, I haven't any money," Dicky was saying, very
politely, with his eye on the broom she held in her hand, "I'll pay
you tomorrow."

"No, you'll settle it _now_," she told him--very cross she was,
too, "or I'll tell your mother, and your father'll paddle you in the
woodshed." Then she added,--"an' you won't get your ball."

Dicky seemed to be more worried about the ball than about the
woodshed, for he whined.

"Aw, pleeze, Mis' Miller, have a heart!"

You see, "Have a heart!" was an expression he had heard down in the
city, and for the last week the boys had been using it every chance
they got.

Still it didn't work on Mis' Miller, for she only shook her head
angrily and took her broom and shouted,--

"Scat, get out!"--just as if they were so many cats--"an' don't come
back for the ball till you come with the money in your hand."

And as everybody in the neighborhood used to say, "Gracious, but Mis'
Miller has a turrible temper!" or "Whew, but can't she get mad?" and
because she was flourishing that broom right in their faces, why, they
did scat like so many cats, just as she had told them.

Across the field they all came running, straight towards Marmaduke,