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me.
    It was only the next morning that the man came to fix the glass in the kitchen window, and when Laurie, who was on his reluctant way to school, told the man his father had shot it out with a gun, I laughed cheerily and remarked that boys always had such good stories to cover their own misdeeds. Laurie looked at me in honest indignation, and I told him that he could take a package of gum from the pantry. Although I do not believe in actually encouraging children to tell lies, and do not in any case suppose that one pack of gum can cover up a flagrance like that one, Laurie gave every impression of being satisfied to share a joke about his father. It never occurred to me that the foundations of our parental authority were being slowly shattered until he came home from school some three or four days later with his jacket torn and an air of great innocent suffering. He was half an hour late, and he was accompanied by two of his friends, both of unsavory character; they strode manfully into the house and on into the study where my husband was peacefully doing research for an article on extinct fishes. I heard part of the conversation from upstairs where I was trying to dress Jannie after her nap. With my mind almost unoccupied, I listened without any real attention. “And they threw stones,” one of Laurie’s friends said in a thin, excited voice; he is somewhat older than Laurie, and he usually tells Laurie’s stories for him when Laurie is too modest to tell them for himself, “and they said terrible language, and they hit Laurie, and everything.”
    â€œWhere were you all this time?” my husband asked. I could feel through the floor the righteous indignation mounting in the study. “Where were you two while these boys were hitting Laurie?”
    There was a moment of quiet, and then Laurie’s voice: “George was behind the tree, and William was running up here to tell you.” Laurie apparently stopped to think for a minute. “I didn’t run,” he added finally, “because I can’t very well, in these snow pants.”
    The enemy—I could see them from the upstairs front window—were still lingering outside, backing down the hill slowly, prepared to do further battle. Then I heard the front door slam. My husband issued forth, supported valiantly on either side by Laurie’s two friends, while Laurie, with commendable discretion, stayed just inside the front door, yelling, “Here comes my father!”
    Halfway up the hill, the enemy waited for my husband, and, although I could not hear, I could see them—my husband speaking fiercely and the enemy looking at him with wide, honest eyes. Presently the battle was resolved; my husband turned and stamped back to the house and the enemy went on down the hill, turning at a safe distance to call inaudible insults.
    When my husband came inside, I went downstairs to meet him. “Well?” I said.
    All of them began talking at once. “And they hit Laurie and everything,” his talkative friend said; “They even chased me,” his other friend added.
    â€œAnd these darn old snow pants,” Laurie said at the same time, while over all of them rose the voice of my husband saying, “Ought to be taught better manners. Boy like that deserves a good whipping.”
    Jannie came down the stairs behind me, asking hopefully, “Was Laurie bad? I’m good, aren’t I? Did Laurie do something new bad?”
    When I had isolated the various political maneuvers into offense and defense, the story went something like this: Laurie and his two friends were walking home from school, entirely without malice, not hurting anybody and minding their own business. As a matter of fact, they stopped quite of their own accord to pick up the books of a little girl who had dropped them into a mud puddle. Furthermore, they were not even thinking any harm, because they were all three most unpleasantly