tightly.

"What are you playin'?" she asked.

They told her.

"Can you play it?" Mildred Bates asked.

"I guess I can," Pearl said modestly. "But I'm always too busy for
games like that!"

"Maudie Ducker says you never play," Mildred Bates said with pity in
her voice.

"Maudie Ducker is away off there," Pearl answered with dignity. "I have
more fun in one day than Maudie Ducker'll ever have if she lives to be
as old as Melchesidick, and it's not this frowsy
standin'-round-doin'-nothin' that you kids call fun either."

"Tell us about it, Pearl," they shouted eagerly. Pearl's stories had a
charm.

"Well," Pearl began, "ye know I wash Mrs. Evans's dishes every day, and
lovely ones they are, too, all pink and gold with dinky little ivy
leaves crawlin' out over the edges of the cups. I play I am at the
seashore and the tide is comin' in o'er and o'er the sand and 'round
and 'round the land, far as eye can see--that's out of a book. I put
all the dishes into the big dish pan, and I pertend the tide is risin'
on them, though it's just me pourin' on the water. The cups are the
boys and the saucers are the girls, the plates are the fathers and
mothers and the butter chips are the babies. Then I rush in to save
them, but not until they cry 'Lord save us, we perish!' Of course, I
yell it for them, good and loud too--people don't just squawk at a time
like that--it often scares Mrs. Evans even yet. I save the babies
first, I slush them around to clean them, but they never notice that,
and I stand them up high and dry in the drip-pan. Then I go in after
the girls, and they quiet down the babies in the drip-pan; and then the
mothers I bring out, and the boys and the fathers. Sometimes some of
the men make a dash out before the women, but you bet I lay them back
in a hurry. Then I set the ocean back on the stove, and I rub the
babies to get their blood circlin' again, and I get them all put to bed
on the second shelf and they soon forget they were so near death's
door."

Mary Ducker had finished the "Java March" and "Mary's Pet Waltz," and
had joined the interested group on the lawn and now stood listening in
dull wonder.

"I rub them all and shine them well," Pearl went on, "and get them all
packed off home into the china cupboard, every man jack o' them singin'
'Are we yet alive and see each other's face,' Mrs. Evans sings it for
them when she's there.

"Then I get the vegetable dishes and bowls and silverware and al