go off somewhere and do
something--well, anything."

He paused and looked at her. She was waiting patiently for him to proceed.
He was aware of his inability to express in words what he felt and wanted,
and all his trouble and general dissatisfaction rose up and gripped hold
of him.

"Oh, you can't understand!" he burst out. "You can't understand. You 're
a girl. You like to be prim and neat, and to be good in deportment and
ahead in your studies. You don't care for danger and adventure and such
things, and you don't care for boys who are rough, and have life and go
in them, and all that. You like good little boys in white collars, with
clothes always clean and hair always combed, who like to stay in at
recess and be petted by the teacher and told how they're always up in
their studies; nice little boys who never get into scrapes--who are too
busy walking around and picking flowers and eating lunches with girls,
to get into scrapes. Oh, I know the kind--afraid of their own shadows,
and no more spunk in them than in so many sheep. That 's what they
are--sheep. Well, I 'm not a sheep, and there 's no more to be said.
And I don't want to go on your picnic, and, what 's more, I 'm not going."

The tears welled up in Bessie's brown eyes, and her lips were trembling.
This angered him unreasonably. What were girls good for, anyway?--always
blubbering, and interfering, and carrying on. There was no sense in them.

"A fellow can't say anything without making you cry," he began, trying to
appease her. "Why, I did n't mean anything, Sis. I did n't, sure. I--"

He paused helplessly and looked down at her. She was sobbing, and at the
same time shaking with the effort to control her sobs, while big tears
were rolling down her cheeks.

"Oh, you--you girls!" he cried, and strode wrathfully out of the room.

CHAPTER II

"THE DRACONIAN REFORMS"

A few minutes later, and still wrathful, Joe went in to dinner. He ate
silently, though his father and mother and Bessie kept up a genial flow
of conversation. There she was, he communed savagely with his plate,
crying one minute, and the next all smiles and laughter. Now that was
n't his way. If _he_ had anything sufficiently important to cry about,
rest assured he would n't get over it for days. Girls were hypocrites,
that was all there was to it. They did n't feel one hundredth part of all
that they said when they cried. It stood to reason that they did n't. It
must be that t