Balboa--to the world she had discovered.
"It--it makes you want to scream," she stammered.

"Booh!" It was a yell from Cody, delivered full in her ear. "If you want
to scream, darn it, scream!" was his practical advice as he spat out the
sunflower-seeds he had been chewing and prepared to climb the pole.

Sissy stood looking at him, the color flooding her face. And as he noted
her expression, the boy suddenly remembered that he did not like Split's
sister. But his mild memory of distaste was as nothing to the disgust
that possessed Sissy. In her ecstasy she had unwittingly lifted a corner
of the lid that she kept tight over her emotions. Logically, she hated
the unimpressed and profane witness of the phenomenon.

She turned her back on him, refusing even to look at his progress up the
high pole. She would not see when, at its top, small as a fly at the
point of a pencil, he waved his hat and, ululating brassily, gave vent
to the desire to be noisily vocal which had clutched Sissy's throat into
silence. At luncheon, she found a spot that was farthest from him; and
when he and Split tore noisily down the mountain's side on the way
back, she submitted rather to be outdone than to join a party of which
he was one.

Crosby Pemberton, bracing himself for the derision he expected from her,
was delighted to see her come sliding down alone to the ravine, where
the successful ones paused to take up the rest of the party. Her
solitary state encouraged him, and he sought her where she sat knocking
the sand out of her shoe.

"Sissy," he said softly, holding out a peace-offering, "I saved some
cream-puffs for you."

But the ruthless Sissy was not to be so easily placated. "You mean for
Split, don't you?" she said, scarcely looking at him, and diligently
lacing her shoe. "She asked you to come, you know. I didn't."

With the look of a wounded dove, Crosby turned, and Sissy saw Irene a
moment later, her teeth gluttonously closed over one of Delia's biggest
puffs, a heart-breaking amount of "filling" gushing over her cheeks and
chin.

But to do without for the sake of principle was ever rapture to the
purist. Sissy placed the pangs of desire to the credit side of Crosby's
account; this was only one thing more she owed her victim. In fact, as
the party started on, so engaged was she in inventing and perfecting
tortures for him that she followed the procession on its unusual detour
without demur. It was only when it was too late