looked upon as an insult.

Sukey then became "It," and, dropping the handkerchief behind Dic,
deliberately waited for him to catch her; when, of course, a catastrophe
ensued. Meantime, the wall was growing uncomfortable to Rita. She had
known in a dimly conscious way that certain things always happened at
country frolics, but to _see_ them startled her, and she began to feel
very miserable. Her tender heart fluttered piteously with a hundred
longings, chief among which was the desire to prevent further
catastrophes between Dic and Sukey.

Compared to Sukey, there was no girl in the circle at all entitled to be
ranked in the Potiphar class of beauty. So, when Dic succeeded Sukey as
"It," he dropped the handkerchief behind her. Then she again chose Dic,
and in turn became the central figure in a catastrophe that was painful
to the girl by the wall. If Rita had been in ignorance of her real
sentiments for Dic, that ignorance had, within the last few minutes,
given place to a knowledge so luminous that it was almost blinding. The
room seemed to become intensely warm. Meantime the play went on, and the
process of making Doug "sick" continued with marked success. Sukey
always favored Dic, and he returned in kind. This alternation, which was
beyond all precedent, soon aroused a storm of protests.

"If you want to play by yourselves," cried Tom, "why don't you go off by
yourselves?"

"Yes," cried the others; "if you can't play fair, get out of the game."

The order of events was immediately changed, but occasionally Sukey
broke away from time-honored precedent and repeated her favors to Dic.
Doug was rapidly growing as "sick" as his most inveterate enemy could
have desired. There was another person in the room who was also very
wretched--one whom Dic would not have pained for all the Sukey
Potiphars in Egypt. The other person was not only pained, she was
grieved, confused, frightened, desperate. She feared that she would cry
out and ask Dic not to favor Sukey. She did not know what to do, nor
what she might be led to do, if matters continued on their present
course.

Soon after Tom's reprimand, Sukey found the duty of dropping the
handkerchief again devolving upon her pretty self. She longed with all
her heart to drop it behind Dic; but, fearing the wrath of her friends,
she concluded to choose the man least apt to arouse antagonism in Dic's
breast. She would choose one whom he knew she despised, and would trust
to luck