won't be anything left but a kind of a pulpy mass. I
can see what they have done to Billy already; he's getting pulpier every
day, and I don't believe his brain would ever work if I didn't keep
stirring it up.

However, the thing I want to say while I think of it is this. It is a
question, and I will ask it here because there is no use of asking it at
home: Why is it that grown-up men and women never have anything really
interesting to say to a girl fifteen years old? Then, if you can answer
that, I wish you would answer another: Why don't they ever listen or
understand what a girl means when she talks to them? Billy and I have
one rule now when we want to say something serious. We get right in
front of them and fix them with a glittering eye, the way the Ancient
Mariner did, you know, and speak as slowly as we can, in little bits
of words, to show them it's very important. Then, sometimes, they pay
attention and answer us, but usually they act as if we were babies
gurgling in cunning little cribs. And the rude way they interrupt us
often and go on talking about their own affairs--well, I will not say
more, for dear mamma has taught me not to criticise my elders, and I
never do. But I watch them pretty closely, just the same, and when I see
them doing something that is not right my brain works so hard it keeps
me awake nights. If it's anything very dreadful, like Peggy's going and
getting engaged, I point out the error, the way they're always pointing
errors out to me. Of course it doesn't do any good, but that isn't my
fault. It's because they haven't got what my teacher calls "receptive
minds."

I'm telling you all this before I tell you what has happened, so you
will be sorry for Billy and me. If you are sorry already, as well indeed
you may be, you will be a great deal more sorry before I get through.
For if ever any two persons were "downtrodden and oppressed" and
"struggling in darkness" and "feeling the chill waters of affliction,"
it's Billy and me to-night--all because we tried to help Peggy and
Lorraine and Aunt Elizabeth after they had got everything mixed up! I
told them I was just trying to help, and Tom Price said right off that
there was only one thing for Billy and me to do in future whenever the
"philanthropic spirit began to stir" in us, and that was to get on board
the suburban trolley-car and go as far away from home as our nickels
would take us, and not hurry back. So you see he is not a bit grate