The shorn head dug deeper. A soft groan escaped Margaret's lips. This very minute, now while she crouched in the grass,--oh, if she put out her hands and felt she would feel the checks! She had been to an orph--to a place once with Moth--with _Her_ and seen the aprons herself. They were all--all checked. At home, folded in a beautiful pile, there were all the others. There was the pink-checked one and the brown-checked one and the prettiest one of all, the one with teenty little white checks marked off with buff. The one she should feel if she put out her hand was a blue-checked. Margaret drove her hands deep into the matted grass; she would not put them out. It was--it was terrible! Now she understood it all. She remembered--things. They crowded--with capital T's, Things,--up to her and pointed their fingers at her, and smiled dreadful smiles at her, and whispered to one another about her. They sat down on her and jounced up and down, till she gasped for breath. The teacher's bell rang crisply and the voices changed to scampering feet. But Margaret crouched on in the sweet, moist grass behind the wall. She stayed there a week--a month--a year,--or was it only till the night chill stole into her bones and she crept away home? [Illustration: She stayed there a week--a month--a year] She and Nell--she and the Enemy--had been so proud to have aprons just alike and cut by the same dainty pattern. But now if she knew--if the Enemy knew! How ashamed it would make her to have on one like--like an adopted's! How she'd wish hers was stripes! Perhaps--oh, perhaps she would think it was fortunate that she _was_ an enemy now. But the worst Things that crowded up and scoffed and gibed were not Things that had to do with enemies. The worst-of-all Things had to do with a little, tender woman with glasses on--whose hair didn't curl. Those Things broke Margaret's heart. "Now you know why She makes you make the bed over again when it's wrinkly," gibed one Thing. "And why she makes you mend the holes in your stockings," another Thing. "She doesn't make me do the biggest ones!" flashed Margaret, hotly, but she could not stem the tide of Things. It swirled in. "Perhaps now you see why She makes you hem towels and wipe dishes--" "And won't let you eat two pieces of pie--" "Or one piece o' fruit-cake--" "Maybe you remember now the times she's said, 'This is no little daughter of mine'?" Margaret turned sharply. "That was only because I was naughty," she pleaded, strickenly, but she knew in her soul it wasn't "only because." She knew it was _because_. The terror within her was growing more terrible every moment.