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was sitting at the table; she had stopped giggling and her dark eye roved in a teasing way as she sloshed coffee into a white china saucer to cool.
    "At the same time," she said, "I can't see how it is such a wise idea to trifle around with the Law. No matter for what reason"
    "I'm not trifling with the Law"
    "You just now set there and spelled them out your name and your house number. Where they can lay hold of you if ever they take the notion."
    "Well, let them!" said Frankie angrily. "I don't care! I don't care!" And suddenly she did not care if anybody knew she was a criminal or not. "Let them come get me for all I care."
    "I was just teasing you," said Berenice. "The trouble with you is that you don't have no sense of humor any more."
    "Maybe I'd be better off in jail."
    Frankie walked around the table and she could feel them going away. The train was traveling to the North. Mile after mile they went away, farther and farther away from the town, and as they traveled to the North, a coolness came into the air and dark was falling like the evening dark of wintertime. The train was winding up into the hills, the whistle wailing in a winter tone, and mile after mile they went away. They passed among themselves a box
of bought store candy, with chocolates set in dainty, pleated shells, and watched the winter miles pass by the window. Now they had gone a long, long way from town and soon would be in Winter Hill.
    "Sit down," said Berenice. "You make me nervous."
    Suddenly Frankie began to laugh. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and went back to the table. "Did you hear what Jarvis said?"
    "What?"
    Frankie laughed and laughed.
    "They were talking about whether to vote for C. P. MacDonald. And Jarvis said:
Why, I wouldn't vote for that scoundrel if he was running to be the dog-catcher.
I never heard anything so witty in my life."
    Berenice did not laugh. Her dark eye glanced down in a corner, quickly saw the joke, and then looked back at Frankie. Berenice wore her pink crepe dress and her hat with the pink plume was on the table. The blue glass eye made the sweat on her dark face look bluish also. Berenice was stroking the hat plume with her hand.
    "And you know what Janice remarked?" asked Frankie. "When Papa mentioned about how much I've grown, she said she didn't think I looked so terribly big. She said she got the major portion of her growth before she was thirteen. She did, Berenice!"
    "O.K.! All right."
    "She said she thought I was a lovely size and would probably not grow any taller. She said all fashion models and movie stars—"
    "She did not," said Berenice. "I heard her. She only remarked that you probably had already got your growth. But she didn't go on and on like that. To hear you tell it, anybody would think she took her text on the subject."
    "She said—"
    "This is a serious fault with you, Frankie. Somebody just makes a loose remark and then you cozen it in your mind until nobody
would recognize it. Your Aunt Pet happened to mention to Clorina that you had sweet manners and Clorina passed it on to you. For what it was worth. Then next thing I know you are going all around and bragging how Mrs. West thought you had the finest manners in town and ought to go to Hollywood, and I don't know what all you didn't say. You keep building on to any little compliment you hear about yourself. Or, if it is a bad thing, you do the same. You cozen and change things too much in your own mind. And that is a serious fault."
    "Quit preaching at me," Frankie said.
    "I ain't preaching. It is the solemn truth."
    "I admit it a little," said Frankie finally. She closed her eyes and the kitchen was very quiet. She could feel the beating of her heart, and when she spoke her voice was a whisper. "What I need to know is this. Do you think I made a good impression?"
    "Impression? Impression?"
    "Yes," said Frankie, her eyes still closed.
    "Well, how would I know?" said Berenice.
    "I mean how did I act? What did I do?"
    "Why,