F CHILDHOOD

That afternoon a couple of children who came to play in the Marshall
orchard brought news that public opinion, after the fashion of that
unstable weathercock, was veering rapidly, and blowing from a wholly
unexpected quarter. "My papa says," reported Gretchen Schmidt, who
never could keep anything to herself, even though it might be by no
means to her advantage to proclaim it--"my papa says that he thinks
the way American people treats colored peoples is just fierce; and he
says if he'd ha' known about our not letting Camilla go to the picnic,
he'd ha' taken the trouble to me '_mit der flachen Hand schlagen._'
That means he'd have spanked me good and plenty."

Maria Perkins, from the limb where she hung by her knees, responded,
"Yup, my Uncle Eben says he likes Judy's spunk."

"I guess he wouldn't have, if it'd ha' been his pickles!" Gretchen
made a last stand against the notorious injustice of fickle adult
prejudices.

But the tide had begun to turn. On Monday morning Sylvia and Judith
found themselves far from ostracized, rather the center of much
respectful finger-pointing on the part of children from the other
grades who had never paid the least attention to them before. And
finally when the Principal, passing majestically from room to room in
his daily tour of inspection, paused in his awful progress and spoke
to Judith by name, asking her quite familiarly and condescendingly
what cities you would pass through if you went from Chicago to New
Orleans, the current set once and for all in the other direction. No
mention was ever made of the disappearance of the Fingals, and the
Marshall children found their old places waiting for them.

It was not long before Judith had all but forgotten the episode; but
Sylvia, older and infinitely more impressionable, found it burned
irrevocably into her memory. For many and many a week, she did not
fall asleep without seeing Camilla's ashy face of wretchedness. And it
was years before she could walk past the house where the Fingals had
lived, without feeling sick.

Her life was, however, brimming with active interests which occupied
her, mind and body. There was rarely a day when a troop of children
did not swarm over the Marshall house and barn, playing and playing
and playing with that indomitable zest in life which is the birthright
of humanity before the fevers and chills of adolescence begin. Sylvia
and Judith, moreover, were required to assume more and m