me over her that that young
woman had not yet gone home. Then Margery sat up and listened.

"I just feel so sorry for your poor father," Gladys's voice was
saying. "He'll feel so disgraced!" After a slight pause she
asked: "Don't you think he'll be home soon?"

So that was it! Gladys lingered on in hopes of witnessing the
last scene of Margery's humiliation. Oh, what a deceitful
creature Gladys was, pretending that the whole family was so
disgraced, yet remaining still as intimate with them as ever!
How horrid they all were--everybody except, perhaps--perhaps her
father! In the past he was the only one who had ever shown
himself superior to public opinion and circumstantial evidence.
Would he be the same this time? If he, too, were going to be
shocked and surprised, Margery felt that there was nothing left
for her but to go off somewhere alone and die.

"How many boys did you say they was, Henry?"

Henry evidently had not said, for he did not answer now. Nothing
daunted, Gladys went on.

"I suppose they was at least ten. Yes, I'm sure they must ha'
been ten."

"No, they wasn't," Henry blurted out. "They was only five."

Margery tossed about on her little bed in helpless rage and
scorn. Why, the creature was a regular Delilah!

"Who was they, Henry?"

Again Henry kept silence. But this time Gladys's question was
answered in another way. From up the street came the various
noises that announce the approach of a crowd of boys.

"Here they come now," Gladys exclaimed in candid satisfaction.

Yes, without doubt they were coming. When they saw Henry they
began immediately a taunting sing-song:

"Oh, Henry, can't guess who I seen in swimmin'! Can't guess who I
seen in swimmin'!"

Henry dashed off the porch and the chorus scattered in various
directions. One saucy voice sang as it ran:

Motheh, may I go out to thwim?
Yeth, my darlin' daughter;
Hang your cloth' ...

Yes, that was the whole thing in a nutshell, Margery thought. It
was exactly how they always talked to girls.

Hang your clothes on a hickory limb,
And DON'T go near the water!

Wasn't it what her mother said to her a dozen times a day? _Now
be a good little girl and have a good time._ How could you be a
_good_ little girl and have a good time at the _same_ time? The
irony of it, when anybody with a grain of sense would know that
the two do not go hand in hand! If she had stayed home that
afternoon, she would hav