voice exclaimed. "Really an'
honest she is--an' she doesn't know it!"

"Oh my, isn't it awful!" another voice. "Shouldn't you think she'd
hide her head--I mean, if she knew?"

It was already hidden. Deep down in the sweet, moist grass--a little
heavy, uncrowned, terror-smitten head. The cruel voices kept on.

"It's just like a disgrace, isn't it? Shouldn't you s'pose it would
feel that way if 'twas you?"

"Think o' kissin' your mother good-night an' it's not bein' your
mother?"

"Say, Rhody Sharp--all o' you--look here! Do you suppose that's why
her mother--I mean she that _isn't_--dresses her in checked aperns?
That's what orphans--"

The shorn head dug deeper. A soft groan escaped Margaret's lips. This
very minute, now while she crouched in the grass,--oh, if she put out
her hands and felt she would feel the checks! She had been to an
orph--to a place once with Moth--with _Her_ and seen the aprons
herself. They were all--all checked.

At home, folded in a beautiful pile, there were all the others. There
was the pink-checked one and the brown-checked one and the prettiest
one of all, the one with teenty little white checks marked off with
buff. The one she should feel if she put out her hand was a
blue-checked.

Margaret drove her hands deep into the matted grass; she would not
put them out. It was--it was terrible! Now she understood it all. She
remembered--things. They crowded--with capital T's, Things,--up to
her and pointed their fingers at her, and smiled dreadful smiles at
her, and whispered to one another about her. They sat down on her and
jounced up and down, till she gasped for breath.

The teacher's bell rang crisply and the voices changed to scampering
feet. But Margaret crouched on in the sweet, moist grass behind the
wall. She stayed there a week--a month--a year,--or was it only till
the night chill stole into her bones and she crept away home?

[Illustration: She stayed there a week--a month--a year]

She and Nell--she and the Enemy--had been so proud to have aprons
just alike and cut by the same dainty pattern. But now if she
knew--if the Enemy knew! How ashamed it would make her to have on one
like--like an adopted's! How she'd wish hers was stripes!
Perhaps--oh, perhaps she would think it was fortunate that she _was_
an enemy now.

But the worst Things that crowded up and scoffed and gibed were not
Things that had to do with enemies. The worst-of-all Things had to do
with a little,