to fight, you can go straight home," Peace interposed.
"Mrs. Wood wants Billy to grow up a gentleman."

"We ain't fighting," they chorused indignantly.

"You looked like it all right. You're always jawing each other, and I
don't like scrappers."

"We won't jaw any more," they meekly promised, "if you will let us come
over and play."

"I--I'll have to ask Mrs. Wood," she stammered, for, while the newcomers
interested her, their slovenly appearance made her recoil from any
closer contact.

"Then we can't come," wailed Antonio despairingly.

"Why not?"

"'Cause Mrs. Wood don't like us."

"How do you know?"

"She won't let us play with Billy."

"P'r'aps you are too rough."

"We wouldn't hurt him the least speck."

"Maybe it's 'cause you are so dirty."

A chorus of indignant denial arose, but at that moment Mrs. Wood herself
appeared at an open window and called for Billy Bolee. Immediately the
McGees scattered like startled pheasants, and Peace wonderingly turned
her steps toward the house, surprising her hostess as she entered the
cool room by the blunt question, "Don't you like the McGee family?"

"Why--er--I can get along nicely without their company," Mrs. Wood
answered evasively.

"But what's the matter with them?" Peace insisted.

"Nothing, I guess, except they are never clean," laughed the woman, and
Gail looked up from a letter she was writing long enough to ask, "Who
are the McGees, Peace? Your latest acquaintances?"

"Mrs. McGee is a widow who takes in washing," explained their hostess,
without giving Peace a chance to make reply. "She and her seven children
live in that three-room shack across the field. When her husband died
she took plain sewing to do for a time, but couldn't earn enough at it
to keep her family from want, so she turned to the washtubs. She does
her work well or did at first, but of late she has attempted more than
she can handle satisfactorily, and has grown so careless that several of
us have had to take our washings elsewhere."

"'Twasn't careless," Peace interrupted earnestly. "It's her tubs. They
are so old and rusty now."

"Then she should get new ones if she expects people to hire her. I can't
afford to send my clothes to the wash and have them come back all
spotted up with iron-rust. It is almost impossible to get it out."

"I guess maybe she hasn't money enough to buy more tubs," Peace
hazarded. "All her milk customers are quitting her."

"I can't say that