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Nobody needn't laugh at me for that. But I just hate that lady that laughed at me! I hate everybody that pokes fun at me. And I ain't goin' to always be a Dutchie. You see once if I don't be something else when I grow up!"
I don't believe Mitch worked on the newspaper more'n a week or ten days, but lots happened; and I went down to see him a good deal to hear Dutchie Bale talk and swear. He swore awful, especially on press day; for the press nearly always broke down just as they started to print. Here he's over at Springfield, and me runnin' the paper and tryin' to print a paper on a grindstone like this.
"Come," interrupted the aunt, "help now to dish up. It's time to eat once. We're Pennsylvania Dutch, so what's the use gettin' cross when we're called that?" "Yes," Phœbe's father said, smiling, "I'm a Dutchie too, but I'm a big Dutchie." Phœbe smiled, but all through the meal and during the days that followed she thought often of the rose.
Mitch would be standin' there half scared and half laughin', and another printer named Sandy Bill would be sayin': "Why don't you tighten that bolt, Dutchie?"
But not so hurriedly that she failed to hear the words, "LITTLE DUTCHIE" and a merry laugh from the young woman. "She she laughed at me!" Phœbe murmured to herself under the blue sunbonnet. "I don't know who she is, but that was at Mollie Stern's house that she sat that lady that laughed at me. She called me a Dutchie!"
"There," she cried in triumph a moment later, "I found the first one!" She lifted a small cluster of trailing arbutus and gave it to David. "Um-ah," he said, in imitation of a little girl of long ago. "Little Dutchie," she answered. "But you can't provoke me to-day. I'm too happy to be peevish. Come, kneel down, you'll never find arbutus when you stand up."
"Give it to him, Dutchie!" and all such expressions, until at last Billy got on his feet again, and with a parting hook he slit the butcher's coat up the back and left him lying in the mud, while he ran off as fast as his legs would carry him. And it is needless to say that none of that crowd tried to stop him.
A man named Pemberton, which they called the Jack of Clubs, and a man named Hockey, which they called "Whistlin' Dick," had an awful fight by the corner store; and Mitch wrote up the fight for the paper, the editor bein' in Springfield, and Dutchie not carin' what was printed.
I didn't laugh at you in the way you think. Why, I laughed at you just as we laugh at a dear little baby, because we love it and because it is so dear and sweet. And DUTCHIE was just a pet name. Can't you understand? You were so quaint and interesting in your sunbonnet and with the pink rose pressed to your face. Can't you understand?" Phœbe smiled radiantly, her face beaming with happiness.
"Vat you do?" he would demand, glaring. And Mr. Wiley would laugh insolently. "You think I done it, do you, Dutchie huh!" He would saunter past, up the stairs, and into the Bumpus dining-room, often before the family had finished their evening meal. Lise alone made him welcome, albeit demurely; but Mr. Wiley, not having sensibilities, was proof against Hannah's coldness and Janet's hostility.
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