IT was not long after this that Tom's mother and Alice took leave of each other with a courtesy that bordered on stiffness, the older lady flinging back the word from beneath her flaunting parasol:
"Well, as you know, Alice, I still belong to that world which believes that girls should be girls and women, women."
Alice told Tom when he returned in the evening, "All I'm trying to get and all that Sara is trying to get, as far as I can see, is a little natural outdoor exercise with other children. If other women bring their daughters up as little prigs, as stationary as any built-in washtub, I can't help myself."
"That's all right, my dear," Tom Marcey agreed with her; "but boys have hated from all time to have girls tagging after them. Don't ask me why. They always have and I suppose they always will. And," he went on, "if anybody had talked mistletoe to me I would have gone and buried myself—any natural boy would."
Robert, who unfortunately had sauntered along at his father's closing remark, capped it off with:
"Yes, and right in spring, too! If it had happened around Christmas when people do have it strung up, it would 'a' been different. But just now!"
It was the unseasonableness of Sara's dream that constituted one of its worst features in her brother's mind. Dreams of mistletoe and holly and Santa Claus and stockings occurring round about Christmas, or dreams of fire-crackers or flags occurring round about the Fourth of July, were permissible; but dreams of mistletoe in the spring, and the early spring at that, indicated nothing but an unpleasant and embarrassing perversity in the mind of a young female.
For some days after that Robert refused—absolutely refused, to play with Sara. He was diplomatic.
"Every time she comes around they'll pick on Bill," was his explanation, "and then there'll be a scrap—you don't want a scrap? You always say you don't want a scrap."
It was here that Tom Marcey came to what he would have called the rescue.
"Sara," he said, "has got to have exercise. On the other hand, you can't let her butt in on the boys if they doN't want her. I'm going to put up a swing for Sara, and it's to be hers for certain hours. At those times the boys can't come near it."
"You know," Alice protested, "those'll be just the hours the boys will want the swing."
"Let it be the hours," said that illogical male. "Good for them—teach them something!"
Just what it would teach them he didn't make ap-parent.
Alice saw exercise in that swing; moreover, she saw trouble ahead.
"Why can't they use it all together?" she asked.
"Because then Sara would never get a show at it at all, and you know she wouldn't," replied Tom. "I'm going to see fair play."
The swing altered Sara's spiritual status. From being Tom's dependent, she was like a person who has been given his own bank account. She now had gifts to bestow. At first Sara and her little friends who gathered from neighboring houses used it for the legitimate purpose of swings, that is to say for swinging. Later it became a tea table and doll's dishes were spread upon it. With the advent of the swing and its attendant amusements Sara seemed to have forgotten boys and all their works. No longer did she urge to be allowed to play "cops and robbers" no longer did she wish to play hide and seek. One-old-cat and any amount of old cats had lost their joy for her.
Meanwhile, on the fringe of this enchanted ground boys gathered, crying:
"Aw, come on, Sara, let's have just one swing! Aw, come on, we'll push you as high as you want!"
To this Sara replied primly:
"My father says I'm to play in the swing by myself without boys. He thinks boys are too rough."
This last was Sara's invention.
"Come on!" they begged, "come on, let's play house with you, Sara! Let's play school with you."
"No," said Sara, "we girls don't want any boys around. No, Robert Marcey, I won't let you touch my doll. Last time you had my doll you said you was an Indian, and if Mother'd let you use matches you'd have scalped her and burned her, and, anyhow, you buried her and got her awful dirty."
"You've asked and begged to have Sara taken off your hands," Alice told Robert with that logic which is so irritating to childhood. "Now Sara is perfectly happy amusing herself, I see no reason why you can't amuse yourselves alone."
"Well, we want to swing sometimes, don't we?" Robert asked in an aggrieved voice. "We aren't going to hurt the girls, are we?"
"You can use the swing at the hours your father told you."
"Yes, and when's that?" Robert asked, disgustedly. "When all the older boys are out of school and we'll have to be playing ball with them."
"Playing ball with them," meant permission to carry clubs and chase balls that went out of limits, and perhaps to pass the ball to and fro—an occupation they could have indulged in at any time, but which somehow or other gained a magic when performed under the eyes of the older boys.