"I--I'll give you all my marshmallows
that we brought with us to toast at an
open fire, if you do!... Yes! and
one of my two little thistle pins--pebble
pins--that Andrew and his wife brought
me from Scotland, when they went home
last year, &if you do^.... Wasn't he
just hor-rid? He didn't want to speak
to us--to know us!"

Una's face flamed upon the bribe, and
was so pretty lit by that fixed star in the
eye, that it must have been a zero-hearted
nickum who could turn his back upon it.

"Hold my hat," said Pem: if she had
been a boy, the tone would have meant:
"Hold my coat while I thrash him!"

Unhesitatingly she stepped to the precipice-brink
and measured the distance to
that Devil's Chair very coolly and critically
with her eye.

[[77]]

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