come on their land whenever
we liked," stammered Gladys.

"Yes, when they supposed that they and their guests were to receive the
same sort of courtesy from you. But the Worcesters aren't here just
now, and I must ask you girls not to come across the line at all,
unless you wish to behave in a very different manner."

"I--I don't know what you mean, Miss Mercer. We haven't done
anything--"

"That's silly, Gladys. I'm not going to do anything about it, but I
think it would be very easy to prove that it was you and your friends
who locked us in. Didn't you stop to think of what would have happened
if there had been a fire?"

Gladys grew pale.

"I don't suppose you did," Eleanor went on. "I don't think you mean to
be wicked, any of you. But just try to think of how you would have
felt if that house had caught fire in the night, and some of us had
been burned to death because we couldn't get out."

"I didn't--we never thought of that," said Gladys. "Did we, girls?"

"Well, I don't suppose you did. But that doesn't excuse the trick you
played at all. I'm not going to say anything more now, but I think
that if you stop to consider yourselves, you'll find out how mean you
were, and what a contemptible thing you've done."

With heads hanging, and tears in the eyes of some of them, completely
crushed by Miss Eleanor's quiet anger as they would not have been had
she heaped reproaches upon them, the raiders started to return to their
own camp. Eleanor stood aside to let them pass; then, with Bessie, she
went back to the camp.

"I hardly think we'll have any more trouble with them," she said.

"I don't see why they dislike us so much," said Bessie. "We haven't
done anything to them."

"I don't know how to explain it, Bessie. It isn't American; that's the
worst thing about it. But you know that in Europe they have lords and
dukes and an aristocracy, don't you? People who think that because
they're born in certain families they are better than anyone else?"

"Yes."

"Well, there's a good deal of excuse for people to feel that way over
there, because it's their system, and everyone keeps on admitting it,
and so making the aristocrats believe it. They're the descendants of
men who, hundreds of years ago, really did do great things, and earned
certain honors that their children were allowed to inherit."

"But it isn't the same over here at all, Miss Eleanor."

"No, and that's just it. But these girls,