The Hickory Limb Part 3

At their own gate they met the twins and Gladys Bailey just returning from their round of calls. One look at the strange pair, and even Gladys lost her air of blase indifference. Her eyes opened wide and she took a deep breath of interest and surprise.

"Why, Henry," she said, "what in the world has Margery gone and done now?"

_What has Margery gone and done now?_ If that wasn't like Gladys, before she knew a thing about it to decide that Margery had gone and done something! And when it was Gladys herself who was the cause of it all, anyhow! Remembering this, Margery turned on her and snarled like some angry little animal.

At this fresh token of savagery in his younger sister, Henry's face grew quite apoplectic with shame. But, still keeping his mouth closed, he pushed by Gladys and the twins, and dragged Margery up the steps of the front porch.

"Oh, look at Margery's hair!" Gladys called out in virtuous concern. "What _has_ happened? You _must_ tell us, Henry!"

Family shame might keep Henry's mouth closed, but Margery felt no such restraint. She wanted Gladys to know! She wanted everybody to know! So while Henry was freeing one hand of tin can and seine, preparatory to opening the door, she twisted around until she, could shout out the news to the listening world.

"I went in swimmin'!" she cried, shaking her muddied locks at Gladys. "That's what!" She had to hurry, for Henry was already pulling at the screen door. "With boys, too! With _boys_!"

Henry jerked her roughly into the house, but not before she had heard the beginning of Gladys's unctuous comment: "Oh, how disgraceful! Ain't Margery just too awful!" She also had time to realize vaguely that, disgraceful though it was, Gladys seemed in no haste to turn on the twins that cold glance of scorn which, by all reckoning, should instantly have been forthcoming. Why did she stay on talking to them? A cold doubt began to creep into Margery's mind. Had she, after all, disgraced only herself? The doubt slowly grew to a certainty, until, by the time she found herself dragged into the library, she felt as miserable and forlorn as she looked.

Without a word Henry placed her before her mother. Her mother raised languid eyes from a novel; then, like Gladys, showed livelier interest.

"Margery! What have you been doing?"

"Swimmin'." Henry answered for her, in the first syllables he had uttered since leaving the pond.

"Swimming!" repeated her mother faintly.

"With boys," added Henry gloomily.

"With boys!" echoed her mother, looking helpless and alarmed. The occasion was evidently one which demanded a well-chosen reproof.

She paused a moment, then said impressively: "Why, I never heard of a little girl doing such a thing!"

At that all Margery's waning spirit flared up. It was what they always said! Whatever she did was bad, not because it _was_ bad, but because _she_ was a girl!

"'Tain't my fault I'm a girl!" she cried, stamping her foot and glaring out from under her muddy hair, more than ever like a little creature of the woods. "I don't want to be a girl! I want to be a boy, and you know I do!"

"That will do, Margery," said her mother coldly. "You may go to bed now, and when your father comes home, I shall tell him how you've been behaving and he can punish you. Henry, call Effie."

To Effie was intrusted the task of giving Margery a bath and putting her to bed.

"She's been a bad girl this afternoon, Effie, and if she's rude to you, you may spank her." And Margery's mother, thus shifting her maternal responsibility, first to a servant, then to her husband, returned to her novel with a troubled sigh.

When one is small and in the grip of adverse circ.u.mstances, there is, perhaps, no process of life which can be made more humiliating than a bath. In this instance, suffice to say that Effie was lavish in the use of soap and water, especially soap, and, by the time she finished, had reduced her charge to a state of quiescent misery.

Margery's room was the small front corner room adjoining her mother's. The window was open, and, as she lay in bed, feverish and unhappy, the murmur of conversation from the porch below reached her distinctly. She paid little attention until, hearing Gladys Bailey's voice, it suddenly came 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 circ.u.mstantial 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 nutsh.e.l.l, 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 have been good, but she would not have had a good time. As it was, she had had a good time, but she had not been good. So there you are!

The gate clicked, but it was not Henry, for Gladys offered the conciliatory greeting, "h.e.l.lo, Willie." So it must be Willie Jones coming through their yard to get to his own. Margery wondered whether Gladys would be able to work him as she had worked Henry. Margery thought not, but if she were--well, she, Margery Blair, would have very little more to say to Willie Jones.

When, Margery judged, Willie Jones was pa.s.sing the porch, Gladys asked in her suavest tones, "Oh, Willie, did you see Margery, too?"

For a moment Willie did not answer, and Margery, kneeling on the floor behind the window curtain, held her breath. Then, apparently without slowing his pace, Willie Jones grunted out in his roughest manner:

"Aw, go on! You don't know what you're talkin' about!"

"Willie Jones is just the rudest boy," Gladys informed the twins.

"I wouldn't think your mother would let Margery play with him."

But, up-stairs, Margery wept for joy at this evidence of a true and n.o.ble heart.

Henry returned from the chase with the interesting news that he had almost caught Freddy Larkin.