ter. Their song wavered and sank to silence.

From her point of vantage at the Pelican table Miss Thornton viewed
them anxiously. "The Penguins seem depressed," she said. "Is anything
the matter?"

"I guess it's their Social Conscience," Prissy Adams said grimly,
"getting the better of them."

After taps Clara VanSittart laid a packet on Emma's cot. She had no
business to be talking at all. And it was almost another speech.

"We feel," she concluded, "that Prissy didn't understand."

In tense silence Emma undid the parcel. It contained her legitimate
winnings. She didn't want their darned old beads, but she wrapped the
things up again and slipped them under her pillow. "O.K.," she said.

The Penguins crept into their beds. They had made a noble gesture.
They had cleared their consciences. But for some reason or other they
slept badly.

* * * * *

The Penguins followed each other on the springboard in rapid
succession. They performed every dive they knew and some they didn't,
with an almost desperate fervor. And after each feat they turned
anxious faces to the small figure in the cheap black bathing suit
perched on the landing stage, its face between its fists, like a
Gothic imp peering down malevolently on the world from a cathedral
buttress. But in fact Pip-Emma wasn't even looking at them. She was
worrying about Pop and Ma and the Gang.

Prissy Adams climbed out of the water and stood beside her. "Don't you
want to go in, too, Emma?" she said. "Don't you want to learn to
swim?"

"Nope," Pip-Emma said. "It's cold, and I'm scared."

"Of course you're not," Prissy said. "Happy Warriors are never
scared," she said with a brightness that she hoped wouldn't become a
habit.

"I ain't a Happy Warrior," Emma said. "And I'm scared."

"But supposing someone were drowning, wouldn't you want to be able to
save them?"

"We don't drown down our way," Pip-Emma retorted bleakly. "We ain't
got no water."

It was almost as pathetic as the absence of trees. And, as a
statement, much more accurate. Except on hot summer nights when
good-natured street cleaners turned their hoses on the ecstatically
squealing Gang, there was no water. Pip-Emma, remembering those
glorious occasions, hunched herself dismally, and the defeated Prissy
strode on her way. At the same moment Janet bobbed up from among the
woodpiles.

"Gee, that was swell of you, Emma!"

Pip-Emma peered down. "What was?"

"Saying you were scared. I'm alway