A SURPRISING thing happened: The boys who always swarmed over the Marcey place diminished in numbers. Apparently the sight of the swing was too much for them. Only a few jealous souls stayed behind, and these cried to the girls, alluringly, words which had never passed their lips before in their lives.
"Come on and play cops and robbers with us! Come on and play yards off! Come on—we'll pull you up into the barn by the pulley!"
To all of this Sara, as spokesman, replied:
"We're playing the way my father told us to. We don't want to play those games."
"No!" cried out the bolder spirits, "you always hurt us—we always have to be It."
Pressure was brought to bear. A boy threw a horse chestnut which hit a doll on the head. Upon this Sara, puffed with virtue, approached her mother.
"Mother," she said, "do we have to play with the boys if we don't want to?"
"Certainly not," replied Alice. "When you little girls come in at half past four or quarter to five, the boys can use the swing. Until that time, as your father said, you can use it yourselves."
Sara's report of this interview was far from conciliatory.
"Ah-ha!" she said, "Robert Marcey,—ah-ha, William Travers Jenkins! Mother says we don't have to play with you. Mother says she'd rather have us play by ourselves. Go on off and play with Uncle Zotsby and
