Читать книгу Three Bright Girls. A Story of Chance and Mischance онлайн

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"Not so fast, good sir," cries the owner of the white hands, following her brother's example and, despite her seventeen years, prostrating herself beside him. "White or black, I bet you twopence I pick them up quicker than you. Here, Molly, hold the plate. Now, Dick, start fair, you know. Oh! there's another!" And thereupon commences a hot skirmish, in every sense, over the nuts, which by this time are besprinkling the hearth pretty freely: so hot and energetic, in fact, that the other occupants of the room wisely retire from the contest, contenting themselves with looking on, and exploding with laughter now and again at the suppressed exclamations indicative of the warm nature of the undertaking.

A breathless silence for at least two minutes, then, flushed with victory, Doris rises from the floor and is about to lay her plate on the table, when, lo! another loud pop. Whereupon Dick rushes over with great violence to the spot where his sister is standing, and knocking against her in his efforts to reach the prize first, Doris loses her balance, and clutching wildly at the back of a chair which Daisy is sitting on and tilting back comfortably, down come Daisy, chair, Doris, and nuts, all in an indiscriminate heap on the floor. Loud exclamations arise on all sides, and a pitiful howl is wrung from Daisy, who has planted her hand, in falling, on an almost red-hot chestnut. Doris does not attempt to get up, but, still sitting where she has arrived in such summary fashion, she rates Dick soundly for his ungallant behaviour, her voice subsiding into a sort of wail as she concludes with the remark, "And now I suppose I shall have to do my hair again, you wretched boy. I can't appear before every one like this. Look here!" and giving her head a shake forward, down comes the pretty erection of golden curls which half an hour ago had crowned so becomingly the small neat head.