Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/94

80 the shade, until I have the table set. The house seems rather hot.”

But instead of sitting perfectly still, Fritz, boy-like, wandered around the little garden, with his hands in  everything.

“Say, Amy,” he called, “these sweet peas need straightening; they are awfully tangled up. I’m going to make some sticks for them to climb on.”

“That’s right,” responded Amy; “go ahead!”

So Fritz, penknife in hand, strolled about, whittling some thin bits of board that he had found into supports  for the pea-vines. Or, rather, he connected the little sticks with pieces of twine, thus making a bit of trellis-work for them.

“Is n’t there something more I can do?” he called to Amy. “I want something to keep me busy, so that I won’t be tempted to fire my torpedoes.”

“Oh, dear, you’d better not!” cried Amy.

“Cousin Joan almost had convulsions this morning when she heard the children down the road shouting and  amusing themselves.”

“She is a kind of an old tyrant, is n’t she?” said Fritz, sympathetically.

“She’s had a great many trials,” responded Amy; “more, really, than I have had myself. Then her eyes are in a pretty serious condition.”

“If she were deaf, too,” remarked Fritz, “she’d enjoy more, would n’t she?”

"Oh, well, tin horns and torpedoes, and all those