ht anything
but girls! Cowardy-cats!" A tear, pearly, pathetic, coursed down her
cheek.

The drive was broken. Five sullen little boys stood and glared at her,
impotently.

"You hit us first," declared one boy. "What business d' you have
scratching around like that, I'd like to know! You old scratch cat!"

"He's sickly," said Fanny. "He can't fight. There's something the matter
with his lungs, or something, and they're going to make him quit school.
Besides, he's a billion times better than any of you, anyway."

At once, "Fanny's stuck on Clar-ence! Fanny's stuck on Clar-ence!"

Fanny picked up her somewhat battered Zola from where it had flown at
her first onslaught. "It's a lie!" she shouted. And fled, followed by
the hateful chant.

She came in at the back door, trying to look casual. But Mattie's keen
eye detected the marks of battle, even while her knife turned the frying
potatoes.

"Fanny Brandeis! Look at your sweater! And your hair!"

Fanny glanced down at the torn pocket dangling untidily. "Oh, that!" she
said airily. And, passing the kitchen table, deftly filched a slice of
cold veal from the platter, and mounted the back stairs to her room. It
was a hungry business, this fighting. When Mrs. Brandeis came in at six
her small daughter was demurely reading. At supper time Mrs. Brandeis
looked up at her daughter with a sharp exclamation.

"Fanny! There's a scratch on your cheek from your eye to your chin."

Fanny put up her hand. "Is there?"

"Why, you must have felt it. How did you get it?"

Fanny said nothing. "I'll bet she was fighting," said Theodore with the
intuitive knowledge that one child has of another's ways.

"Fanny!" The keen brown eyes were upon her. "Some boys were picking on
Clarence Heyl, and it made me mad. They called him names."

"What names?"

"Oh, names."

"Fanny dear, if you're going to fight every time you hear that name----"

Fanny thought of the torn sweater, the battered Zola, the scratched
cheek. "It is pretty expensive," she said reflectively.

After supper she settled down at once to her book. Theodore would labor
over his algebra after the dining-room table was cleared. He stuck his
cap on his head now, and slammed out of the door for a half-hour's play
under the corner arc-light. Fanny rarely brought books from school, and
yet she seemed to get on rather brilliantly, especially in the studies
she liked. During that winter following her husband's death Mrs.
Br