"Oh, _of course_ not, darling," Pauline was sympathetic. "You couldn't ... it is _so_ interesting. What would the girls say?" "Pauline, if you ever ..." "Truly, I never will.... But just _think_!" But we reckoned without Alfred Allingham. Alfred was not a nice boy at that age; he had come the way of curled darlings to be a sly, tale-bearing, offensive little cad, and the next Saturday, when Pauline turned him off the croquet ground for ribaldry, he went as far as the rose border and jeered back at us. "I know why you don't want me," he mocked; "so's I can't see Olive and Tommy Bettersworth makin' eyes." He executed a jig to the tune of "Olive's mad and I am glad. And I know what'll please her----" At this juncture the wrist and hand of Tommy Bettersworth appeared over the partition fence armed with horse-chestnuts which thudded with precision on the offensive person of Alfred Allingham. Pauline and I escaped to the summer-house. I thought I was going to cry until I found I was giggling, at which I was so mortified that I did cry. "He'll tell everybody in school," I protested. "What do you care?" soothed Pauline, "besides, you have to be teased about somebody, you know, and have somebody to choose you when they play clap in and clap out. You just _have_ to. Look at me." Pauline had been carrying on the discreetest of flirtations with Henry Glave for some months. "Tommy Bettersworth is a nice boy, and besides, dear, we'll have so much more in common." Pauline was right. Unless you had somebody to be teased about you were really not in things. I was furiously embarrassed by it, but I was resigned. Tommy sent me two notes that winter and a silk handkerchief for Christmas which I pretended was from Pauline. I am not going to be blamed for this. It was at least a month earlier that I had observed Tommy Bettersworth's inability to get away from Nile's corner on his way home from school until I had passed there on mine. It struck me as a very interesting trait of masculine character; I would have liked to talk it over with my mother on the plane of human interest; it seemed possible she might have noted similar eccentricities. I remember I worked around to it Saturday morning when I was helping her to darn the tablecloths. My mother was not unprepared; she did her duty by me as it was conceived in Taylorville, and did it promptly. "You are too young to be thinking about the boys," she said. "I don't want to hear you talking about such things until the time comes." This was so much in line with what was expected of parents, that I blinked the obvious retort that the time for talking about such things was when they began to happen, and went on with the tablecloths. But I couldn't tell her about the handkerchief after that. It would have been positively unmaidenly. And after he had sent me a magnificent paper lace valentine, I distinctly encouraged Tommy Bettersworth.