"I don't care," said Rob. "It's none of their business. I shall wear my yoke if I've a mind to. At any rate, I'll wear it once more, just to show them." "Papa won't let you," said Nelly, quietly, with a tone so earnest and full of certainty that it made Rob afraid she might be right. When Mrs. March saw the children coming home without their yokes, she wondered what could have happened. But almost before she had opened her lips to ask, Rob and Nelly both began to tell the story of their adventures. "Gently! gently! one at a time," cried Mrs. March; but it was impossible for the children to obey her, they were both so excited. At last Mrs. March said:-- "Rob, let Nelly speak first: ladies before gentlemen, always." And the impatient Rob reluctantly kept silent while Nelly told the tale. Mrs. March's face grew sad as the story went on. It was a terrible thing to her to think of her little daughter attacked in the street in that way by rude boys. "Now, oughtn't I to have thrashed them, mamma?" cried Rob, encouraged by the indignation in his mother's face: "oughtn't I to? But Nell she just pulled me into the store by main force; and I felt so mean. I felt as if I looked just like Trotter when he puts his tail between his legs and runs away from a big dog. I don't care: I'll thrash that ugly black-eyed boy yet,--the one that spoke to Nelly; sha'n't I, mamma? Wouldn't you? I know you would! And mayn't I wear the yoke again, just to show them I ain't afraid?" "Keep cool, Rob," said Mrs. March; "keep cool!" "I can't keep cool, mamma," said Rob, almost crying; "and you couldn't, either,--you know you couldn't!" "Perhaps not, dear; but I'd try," replied his mother. "Nothing else does any good ever." "Well, mayn't I wear the yoke, anyhow?" said Rob. "I won't go into Rosita ever again unless I can!" "Rob," said his mother, earnestly, "if you were going across a field where there was a bull, you wouldn't wear a red cloak: would you? It would be very silly, wouldn't it?" "Yes," said Rob, slowly and very reluctantly. He saw what his mother meant. "That's just what I said," interrupted Nelly: "I said it would be very silly to wear them any more. The boys would never let us alone if we did." "Nelly is right," said Mrs. March: "it would be just as silly to carry a piece of red cloth and flourish it in the eyes of the bull, when you know that the sight of red cloth always makes bulls angry." "I don't care if it does make them all set on me," said Rob: "after I've thrashed them once, they'll let me alone. Anyhow, I won't go unless I can wear it; I know that much: I'd feel like a sneak." "Of course you'll do as you like about that, my dear boy," replied Mrs. March: "you never need go up to Rosita, if you would rather not. You know it was all your own plan, yours and Nelly's, going up there to sell things. Your papa and I would never have thought of it."