"Oh, dear me!"
Van fidgeted about for a minute,
"Well, I don't know," he said, twisting his hands. "Oh, dear me! Why, you
might say I'm not a snapping-turtle," he cried cheerfully at last, and
fairly hugging Percy in his delight.
"So I might," said Percy, well pleased, "but I didn't say you _were_ a
snapping-turtle; I said you were as cross as a snapping-turtle."
"Well, you might say I'm not as cross as a snapping-turtle, then," said
Van, determined to fix it some way.
So Percy said it, and then the two brothers plunged out of doors without a
thought of the formalities of any plan. But it was Van who furnished it
after all.
"Let's go down and see [Candace]," he said.
"Oh, yes, let's," cried Percy, [then] he stopped short and began to laugh.
"What's the matter?" Van twitched his sleeve.
"Nothing," said Percy, so relieved he hadn't said what was on the tip of
his tongue; "you've done it after all and told something for us to do."
"Well, then, come on," cried Van, with a harder twitch. So they set off at
a lively pace for the delights of Candace's little shop.
Meanwhile, Polly was sorrowfully confessing to Mrs. Sterling why she was
late, and explaining all the reason that Joel couldn't accompany her. And
the whole story of the morning affair on the pond, as gathered from Jack,
for Joel hadn't told a word of the encounter with the crowd of rough boys,
had to be gone over with before Mrs.
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