against one of the decalogues of childhood. She had been obscurely guilty of the last act of indelicacy. She had done the most awful thing a child can do, which is to cause ridicule to descend upon other children, and worst of all, one of those children was her own brother.
"Why didn't they make fun of her?" Alice asked Robert.
"They do," he replied succinctly; "but then they make fun of all girls. Everybody knows that girls are nutty; that's why the fellows don't want them around."
Alice sighed. Apparently, if your daughter was to be any more than tolerated in wholesome games in her own yard she had to be a sort of super-boy, matchless in strength, peerless in tact, and sacrificing all the endearing mannerisms which made her beloved of her elders. And how could one teach Sara a feat like this? It seemed hopeless.
Alice had no comfort from Tom's mother, to whom she told this occurrence as one of the vagaries of childhood. The elder Mrs. Marcey had been reading Freud.
"I would keep a sharp eye on that child," was her contribution; "that dream may have a precocious significance; and I think distinctly that Sara lacked delicacy, as, indeed, she often does."
"If you mean 'lacked delicacy' by telling innocently anything that happens to be thrown up in your mind," began Alice, to which Mrs. Marcey replied austerely:
"Well, can you explain to me why she is not contented to play with little girls and dolls and other suitable things?" To which Alice replied:
"For the same reason that I was not, because I wanted some active outdoor exercise. Why should a child be thwarted in its wholesome activities at every turn?"
