I had not quite reached the gate when a ball rolled to my feet and the players shouted for it. With beetred face on account of what I knew would be said, I gave the ball an awkward toss. "Hah hah hah! You throw just like a girl! Miss Nancy!"
Often I went around Robin Hood's barn to avoid this particular embarrassment.
Arrived in the girls' yard, I felt as if freed from captivity and in my proper element. Shyness and fright gave way to gleefulness. Moreover, I cared only for the less strenuous games of the gentle sex.
Several boys mounted the high fence in order to tease me. "Ralph, I promise you my sister's doll carriage to push to school!".... "Heigh, Miss Werther, have you finished the mitten I saw you knitting?". . . .
"Say, Ralph, give me a kiss, will you?"
While with girls, I liked nothing better than sucn bantering. I outgirled them in our reaction to the boys' teasing. We finally succeeded in provoking the boys to chase us—my wish all along. To be chased by boys was the highest of childhood's pleasures.
I was always the ringleader of my girl clique, never reflecting on its unnaturalness. They never regarded me as a normal boy—only a "girl-boy." We would even discuss our boy favorites.
Fifth year: My parents thought that if I were shut up closely with boys and away from even the sight of girls, I would be cured of my effeminacy. Thus my fifth to eleventh years of school life were staged at a boys' "prep" several miles from my home village and numbering about a hundred students. But I was only a day-pupil except during my senior year.
