, smiling affectionately into
Clara's eyes. "Why shouldn't we lose it?"

"Why, because," Clara exclaimed indignantly, "because--because--why,
because," she ended lamely. Then, with one of her unexpected bursts of
mental candor, "I'm sure I don't know why," she admitted, "except that
we have always appealed to them for that reason. Then again," she took
up her argument from another angle, "if we learn to walk, they won't
wait on us any more. They may even stop giving us things. As it is now,
they're really very generous to us."

The others smiled with varying degrees of furtiveness. Pete, as they all
knew, could always placate an incensed Clara by offering her some loot
of the homeward way: a bunch of flowers, a handful of nuts, beautifully
colored pebbles, shells with the iridescence still wet on them. She soon
tired of these toys, but she liked the excitement of the surprise.

"Generous to us!" Chiquita burst out--and this was as unexpected as
Lulu's face-about. "Well, when you come to that, they're never generous
to us. They make us pay for all they give us. They seem generous--but
they aren't really--any more than we are."

"They are far from generous," said Peachy. "They are ungenerous. They're
tyrants. They're despots. See how they took advantage of our innocence
and ignorance of earth-conditions."

"I protest." A note that they had never heard from Julia made steel of
the thrilling melody of her voice. "You must know that is not true!"
she said in an accusing voice. "Be fair to them! Tell the truth to
yourselves! If they took advantage of our innocence and ignorance, it
was we who tempted them to it in the first place. As for our innocence
and ignorance--you speak as, if they were beautiful or desirable. We
were innocent and ignorant of earth-conditions because we were too proud
to learn about them, because we always assumed that we lowered ourselves
by knowing anything about them. Our mistake was that we learned to fly
before we learned to walk."

"But, Julia, what are we going to do about Angela?" Peachy asked
impatiently.

"I'm coming to that presently," Julia answered. "But before--I want
to ask you a question. Do you remember the big cave in the northern
reef--the one we used to hide in?"

"Oh, I remember," Lulu said, "perfectly."

"Did you ever tell Honey about it?" Julia turned to her directly.

"No. Why, we promised never to tell, didn't we? In case we ever needed a
place of refuge--."

"Have