"Take me!" cried Merrylips, with her mouth full. "Oh, take me too, good Longkin!" "Thou art too small, pigwidgeon," said Flip. "I ben't," clamored Merrylips. "I can trudge stoutly and never cry, I promise ye. I be as apt to go as thou, Flip Venner. Thou hast but four years the better of me." "Ay, but I am a lad, and thou art but a wench," said Flip. He had had the worst of the game with his elder brothers, poor Flip! So he was not in the sweetest of humors. "I care not!" Merrylips said stoutly. "Where thou canst go, Flip, _I_ can go!" At this they all laughed, even that tall youth Longkin, who was growing to stand upon his dignity. "Come, Merrylips!" Longkin teased. "What wilt thou do an Flip get him a long sword and go to war? 'Tis likely he may do so." "And that's no jest," cried Flip, most earnestly. "Father saith an the base Puritan fellows lower not their tone, all we that be loyal subjects to the king must e'en march forth and trounce 'em." "Then Heaven send they lower not their tone!" added Munn. "I be wearied of Ovid and Tully. Send us a war, and speedily, that I may toss my dreary book to the rafters and go trail a pike like a lad of spirit!" "So you'll go unto the wars, you two?" Longkin kept on teasing. "Then hang me if Merrylips shall not make a third! 'Hath as good right as either of ye babies to esteem herself a soldier." Then Flip and Munn cast themselves upon the scoffing eldest brother and mauled him gloriously in a welter of yelping dogs. Like a loyal heart Merrylips tossed by her apple and ran in to aid the weaker side, where she cuffed Flip and tugged at Munn's arm with no mean skill. But in the thick of the fray she got a knock on the nose from Flip's elbow, and promptly she lost her hot little temper. She did not cry, for she had been too well trained by those big brothers, but she screamed, "Hang thee, varlet!" and hurled herself upon Flip. She heard Longkin cry, "Our right old Merrylips!" Through the haze that swam before her eyes, which were all dazzled with the knock that she had got, she saw Flip's laughing face, as he warded her off, and she raged at him for laughing. Then, all at once, she heard her shrill little voice raging in a dead stillness, and in the stillness she heard a grave voice speak. "Sybil! Little daughter!" Merrylips let fall her clenched hands. Shamefacedly she turned, and in the doorway that opened on the terrace she saw Lady Venner stand. "Honored mother!" faltered Merrylips, and stumbled through a courtesy. All in a moment she longed to cry with pain and shame and fright, but she would not, while her brothers looked on. Instead she blinked back the tears, and at a sign from her mother started to follow her into the house. "If it like you, good mother, the fault was mine to vex the child," said Longkin. But the mother answered sternly, "Peace!" and so led Merrylips away.