"A barrel of apples!" said Rose. "And 'smuggled' in! Wherever in the world do you keep them?"
"You are going to be such a favourite with the Tacs next summer, I think I will not tell," said Magnus.
"Poor starved boy!" said Rose. "And he has been home two whole days, and not even half a dish of ice cream, yet."
"I have had all the ice I want, thank you," said Cadet Kindred, looking up at Cherry, who as I said, had been very silent while all these other girls filled the air. "_Cream_ has been scarce. Perhaps if you two would stir up some sort of stuff to-morrow, Cherry would come down and freeze it."
"You shall freeze it yourself," said Violet.
"Agreed--with her to help me." And laughing up at her with mischievous eyes, Magnus finished his song:
"But never you trust the Summer Girl,-- Or you will find to your sorrow, That just as she smiled on Tubs to-day, She'll smile on Daddy to-morrow."
There are three short and simple words, the hardest of all to pronounce in any language, but which no man or nation that cannot utter, can claim to have arrived at manhood. Those words are, I was wrong.
The early tea was over, and long shadows were falling as the little party broke up. The three girls were still debating what sort of ice cream they should make, when just beyond the gate a neighbour, driving by, offered Mr. Erskine a seat in his buggy. Then Magnus turned to his sisters.
"Stay here, you girls," he said. "I have to speak to Cherry very seriously; and I doubt if she likes to be lectured before people. Run in."
The girls laughed and obeyed; but perhaps Cherry did not choose to wait for lectures, nor mean to have them, for she spoke first. They were going slowly up the hill, Magnus falling into the West Point saunter, to which Cherry rather unwillingly conformed.
"We are walking very slow," she ventured. "And you used to walk so fast."
"West Point style. The very first day they impressed it upon my mind that fast walkers want to get somewhere. And, Cerise, just now I do not."
"Magnus," she said suddenly, "what did you really mean by a 'storm flag'?"
"Ah!" said Cadet Kindred, in a tone of deep satisfaction, "now I have got it. I thought it could not be long before Cherry would take me in hand."