Margaret Amelia Rodman bore out Delia’s contention. She and Betty had a dozen eggs saved up from their pullets. They would boil them and bring them. “The pullets?” Calista demanded aghast and was laughed into subjection, and found herself agreeing and planning in order to get back into favour. Delia and the Rodmans were, I now perceive, born leaders of mediæval living. “Why don’t you wait till Saturday?” I finally said, from out a silence that had tried to produce this earlier. “That’s only two days.” “Saturday!” said Delia. “Anybody can have a picnic Saturday. This is most as good as running away.” And of course it was. But.... “Who wants to plant a tree?” Delia continued. “They’ll plant all they’ve got whether we’re here or not, won’t they?” That was true. They would do so. It was clearly a selfish wish to participate that was agitating Calista and me. In the end we were outvoted, and we went. Our families, it seemed, all took the same attitude: We need not plant trees if we did not wish to plant trees. Save in the case of Harold Rodman. He was ruled to be too small to walk to Prospect Hill, and he preferred going back to school to staying at home alone. “I won’t plant no tree, though,” he announced resentfully, as we left him. “I’m goin’ dig ’em all up!” he shouted after us. “Every one in the world!” It was when I was running round the house to get my lunch that I came for the second time face to face with Mary Elizabeth. Mary Elizabeth was sitting flat on the ground, cleaning knives which I recognized as our kitchen knives. This she was doing by a simple process, not unknown to me and consisting of driving the knife into the ground up to its black handle and shoving it rapidly up and down. It struck me as very strange that she should be there, in _our_ back yard, cleaning _our_ knives, and I somewhat resented it. For it is curious how much of a savage a little girl in a white apron can really be. But then I did not at once recognize her as the girl whom I had seen in the wood yard. I remember her sometimes as I saw her that day. She had straight brown hair the colour of my own, and her thick pig-tail, which had fallen over her shoulder as she worked, was tied with red yarn. Her face was a lovely, even cream colour, with no freckles such as diversified my own nose, and with no other colour in her cheek. Her hands were thin and veined, with long, agile fingers. The right sleeve of her reddish plaid dress was by now slit almost to the shoulder, and her bare arm showed, and it was nearly all wrist. She had on a boy’s heavy shoes, and these were nearly without buttons. “What you doing?” I inquired, coming to a standstill. She lifted her face and smiled, not a flash of a smile, but a slow smile of understanding me. “This,” she replied, and went on with her task. “What’s your name?” I demanded.