were!" said the boy in a sullen accent.

Sylvia and Judith looked on in amazement at this scene of
insubordination, as new to them as all the rest of the boy's actions.
He was standing still now, submitting in a gloomy silence to the
various comments on his appearance, which was incredibly different
from that with which he had started on his travels. The starch
remaining in a few places in his suit, now partly dried in the
hot sun, caused the linen to stand out grotesquely in peaks and
mud-streaked humps, his hair, still wet, hung in wisps about his very
dirty face, his bare, red feet and legs protruded from shapeless
knickerbockers. His stepmother looked at him with her usual
good-natured amused gaze. "It is customary, before going in swimming,
isn't it, Arnold, to take your watch out of your pocket and put your
cuff-links in a safe-place?" she suggested casually.

"Good Heavens! His watch!" cried Mr. Rollins, clutching at his own
sandy hair.

Professor Marshall clapped the boy encouragingly on the shoulder.
"Well, sir, you look more like a human being," he said heartily,
addressing himself, with defiance in his tone, to his sister.

She replied with a smile, "That rather depends, doesn't it, Elliott,
upon one's idea of what constitutes a human being?"

Something in her sweet voice roused Judith to an ugly wrath. She came
forward and took her place protectingly beside her new playmate,
scowling at her aunt. "We were having a _lovely_ time!" she said
challengingly.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith looked down at the grotesque little figure and
touched the brown cheek indulgently with her forefinger. "That too
rather depends upon one's definition of a lovely time," she replied,
turning away, leaving with the indifference of long practice the
unfortunate Mr. Rollins to the task of converting Arnold into a
product possible to transport through the streets of a civilized town.

Before they went away that day, Arnold managed to seek Judith out
alone, and with shamefaced clumsiness to slip his knife, quite new and
three-bladed, into her hand. She looked at it uncomprehendingly. "For
you--to keep," he said, flushing again, and looking hard into her
dark eyes, which in return lightened suddenly from their usual rather
somber seriousness into a smile, a real smile. Judith's smiles were
far from frequent, but the recipient of one did not forget it.

CHAPTER IV

EVERY ONE'S OPINION OF EVERY ONE ELSE

In this way, almost