the Fingals' old cook had taken a little too much whiskey for
once and had fallen to babbling at the grocery-store before a highly
entertained audience of neighbors, about the endless peregrinations
of the Fingal family in search of a locality where the blood of the
children would not be suspected--"an' theah motheh, fo' all heh
good looks, second cousin to Mattice!" she had tittered foolishly,
gathering up her basket and rolling tipsily out of the store.

"_Well_--" said Judith, "did you ever!" She was evidently as much
amazed as her sister, but Sylvia felt with a sinking of the heart
that what seemed to her the real significance of the news had escaped
Judith.

The Five A girls came trooping up to Sylvia.--"Of course we can't
have Camilla at the picnic."--"My uncle wouldn't want a _nigger_
there."--"We'll have to tell her she can't come."

Sylvia heard from the other groups of children about them snatches
of similar talk.--"Anybody might ha' known it--singin' the way they
do--just like niggers' voices."--"They'll have to go to the _nigger_
school now."--"Huh! puttin' on airs with their carriage and their
black dresses--nothin' but niggers!" The air seemed full of that word.
Sylvia sickened and quailed.

Not so Judith! It had taken her a moment to understand the way in
which the news was being received. When she did, she turned very
pale, and broke out into a storm of anger. She stuttered and halted
as she always did when overmastered by feeling, but her words were
molten. She ignored the tacit separation between children of different
grades and, though but a third-grader, threw herself passionately
among the girls who were talking of the picnic, clawing at their arms,
forcing her way to the center, a raging, white-faced, hot-eyed little
thunderbolt. "You're the meanest low-down things I ever heard of!" she
told the astonished older girls, fairly spitting at them in her fury.
"You--you go and s-sponge off the Fingals for c-c-cakes and rides and
s-s-soda water--and you think they're too l-l-lovely for w-words--and
you t-t-try to do your hair just the way C-C-Camilla does. They aren't
any different today f-f-from what they were yesterday--are they? You
make me sick--you m-m-make m-m-me--"

The big bell rang out its single deep brazen note for the formation of
lines, and the habit of unquestioning, instant obedience to its voice
sent the children all scurrying to their places, from which they
marched forward to thei