Judith was pointing silently to a big paper bag on the shelf. It had been tossed there with some violence evidently, for the paper had burst and the contents had cascaded out on the shelf and on the floor--the rich, be-raisined cookies which Camilla was to have taken to the picnic. Sylvia felt the tears stinging her eyelids, and pulled Judith out of the tragic house. They stood for a moment in the yard, beside a bed of flowering crocuses, brilliant in the sun. The forsaken house looked down severely at them from its blank windows. Judith was almost instantly relieved of mental tension by the outdoor air, and stooped down unconcernedly to tie her shoe. She broke the lacing and had to sit down, take it out of the shoe, tie it, and put it back again. The operation took some time, during which Sylvia stood still, her mind whirling. For the first time in her steadily forward-going life there was a sharp, irrevocable break. Something which had been yesterday was now no more. She would never see Camilla again, she who recalled Camilla's look of anguish as though they still stood side by side. Her heart filled with unspeakable thankfulness that she had put her arms around Camilla's neck at that supreme last moment. That had not been Judith's doing. That had come from her own heart. Unconsciously she had laid the first stone in the wall of self-respect which might in the future fortify her against her weaknesses. She stood looking up blindly at the house, shivering again at the recollection of its echoing, empty silence. The moment was one she never forgot. Standing there in that commonplace backyard, staring up at a house like any one of forty near her, she felt her heart grow larger. In that moment, tragedy, mystery, awe, and pity laid their shadowy fingers on her shining head. CHAPTER IX THE END OF CHILDHOOD That afternoon a couple of children who came to play in the Marshall orchard brought news that public opinion, after the fashion of that unstable weathercock, was veering rapidly, and blowing from a wholly unexpected quarter. "My papa says," reported Gretchen Schmidt, who never could keep anything to herself, even though it might be by no means to her advantage to proclaim it--"my papa says that he thinks the way American people treats colored peoples is just fierce; and he says if he'd ha' known about our not letting Camilla go to the picnic, he'd ha' taken the trouble to me '_mit der flachen Hand schlagen._' That means he'd have spanked me good and plenty." Maria Perkins, from the limb where she hung by her knees, responded, "Yup, my Uncle Eben says he likes Judy's spunk." "I guess he wouldn't have, if it'd ha' been his pickles!" Gretchen made a last stand against the notorious injustice of fickle adult prejudices.