Before he could decide, the boy came out of the house, and jumping into the pung, gathered up the reins, and attempted to turn the team towards home.  Chub thought if he were to have any fun, he must get it quickly.

“Heighoh!  You Jumpin’ Ginger!” he shouted, at the same time letting fly the six snowballs.  The frightened nag reared, and turning sharply about, tipped the pung, completely emptying it of passengers and freight.

“That’th a thpill!  Girlth an’ onionth!  Girlth an’ onionth!” shouted Chub, but Mandy, who was older, knew quite enough to be frightened, that is, frightened for her own safety.  If the little girls were hurt, would some one blame her or Chub?  The driver had stopped the thoroughly terrified horse, the pung was not injured, so he thought he might see if the children were harmed.

Mandy had helped Arabella to her feet, and picked up her shawls, which had fallen off.  She was more frightened than hurt, but her feelings were injured.  Patricia, brushing the snow from her cloak, spoke her thoughts very plainly.

“Chub’s a perfectly horrid boy,” she said, “and we might have broken our necks.”

“Ye didn’t, though,” said Mandy.

“And I shouldn’t wonder if Ma had him put in the big lock-up,” she said, “for scaring our horse, and tipping us out on the road.  We may get reumonia for being thrown into the snow.”

“Ye can’t ‘rest Chub; he ain’t nothin’ but a big baby,” said Mandy, “an’ what’s reumonia, anyway?”

Patricia would not reply.  The driver helped them to pick up the cushions, but the bag of onions, which he had forgotten to take to the big house, he left where they lay in the road.  They were too widely scattered to be gathered up.

Chub found a huge one, and commenced to eat it as eagerly as if it had been a luscious bit of fruit.

“Thith ith fine,” he said as he took a big bite from the onion.

“That Chub’s a regular little pig,” Patricia said, as they rode off, but her words were not heard by Mandy or Chub, for the youthful driver was shouting a loud warning to Chub to throw no more snowballs for fear of a sound thrashing followed by arrest, while Chub, afraid to throw the snowballs, hurled after the pung the worst names that he could think of.

“That horthe ith thlow ath a old moolly cow!  It’th an old thlow-poke!  What a thkinny nag!  That horthe eath nothin’ but newthpaper and thtring!” he yelled.

“That Chub is just a horrid-looking child,” said Patricia, “an’ he’s the Jimmy boy’s brother, but nobody’d ever think it.”

“Who’s the Jimmy boy?” Arabella asked.

“Why, don’t you know the boy that we see sometimes at Dorothy Dainty’s house?”

Arabella shook her head.

“I mean the one that wears a cap with a gold band on it, and a coat with brass buttons, and tries to walk like a man when Mr. Dainty sends him out with parcels,” explained Patricia.