The sun was hot and the row was very long.  Before she reached the middle of it, the perspiration was running down Sister’s face, and her hands were damp and grimy.

“Look here,” Jimmie called to her anxiously, on his way back for more lettuce plants, “don’t you want to rest?  And why don’t you wear a sunbonnet, or something?”

Sister stood up, straightening her aching little shoulders.

“Sunbonnets are hot,” she explained carefully.  “And I don’t want to rest, Jimmie.  I’ll go get a drink of water and then I’ll weed some more.”

“Bring me a drink, too, will you?” Jimmie called after her.

When she brought it he forgot to say thank you because one of his friends had ridden past on his bicycle and this reminded Jimmie that he had meant to do something to his own wheel that morning.  So he drank the water Sister carried out to him without a word because he was cross, and when we’re cross we do not always remember to be polite.

Sister went steadily at the weeding again, and after a while Jimmie finished the lettuce, and began to weed an onion row himself.

“You can stop if you want to now,” he said to Sister presently.  “Don’t you want to play?  I can finish these.”

“I’m not going to stop till they’re all done,” announced Sister.  “Molly says the only way to get anything finished is to use plenty of per—­perservance!”

Jimmie laughed and glanced at her curiously.

“I guess you mean Perseverance” he suggested, “Well, Sister, you are certainly fine help.  It begins to look as though I could go swimming this afternoon after all.”

Surely enough, when Mother Morrison called to them that lunch was ready, they were weeding the last onion row.

“I can finish that in fifteen minutes,” declared Jimmie gaily.  “You’re a brick, Sister!  When you want me to do something for you, just mention it, will you?”

Sister beamed.  She was hot and tired and she knew her face and hands were streaked and dirty.  Brother had spent the morning playing with Nellie Yarrow and Ellis Carr, and Nellie’s aunt had taken them to the drug store for ice-cream soda.  Yet Sister, far from being sorry for her hot, busy morning in the garden, felt very happy.

“Now you don’t mind, do you?” she asked Jimmie anxiously.

“Mind what?” he said, putting the wheelbarrow away in the toolhouse.

“About the butterflies,” explained Sister.

“I’d forgotten all about them,” declared Jimmie, hugging her.

CHAPTER XVIII

MICKEY GAFFNEY

Brother and Sister were very fond of playing school.  They carefully saved all the old pencils and scraps of paper and half-used blank books that Grace and Louise and Jimmie gave them, and many mornings they spent on the porch “going to school.”

Neither had ever been to school, and of course they were excited at the prospect of starting in the fall.  Brother had had kindergarten lessons at home and he was ready for the first grade, while Sister would have to make her start in the Ridgeway school kindergarten.