"Who do you s'pose she will get?" persisted Tobias.

"How d' you s'pose I know?" snapped the girl.

"P'r'aps Mrs. Wood might let her do her clothes again," suggested Antonio, in wheedling tones.

"Mrs. Wood?" asked Peace, rousing suddenly to speech. "My Mrs. Wood?"

Seven dirty, frowsy heads nodded solemnly.

"Is your mother her washwoman?"

"She used to be," the whole line chorused.

"Why ain't she now?"

"'Cause Mrs. Wood quit her."

"But what for?"

There was an embarra.s.sing pause while the tribe of McGee glanced inquiringly from one to the other. At last Antonio timidly ventured the explanation, "She said Ma's tubs got iron rust all over her clo'es."

"Ain't that reason enough for Mrs. Wood to quit?" demanded Peace, c.o.c.king her head judiciously.

"Ma was awful careful," the girl called Feely defended.

"But her tubs are awful old," half whispered a smaller girl, who up to this moment had stood silently sucking her thumb.

"Shut up, Vinie, she ain't talking to you," commanded Tobias, raising a threatening hand.

Vinie stuffed her thumb hastily into her mouth again and shrank back against the fence, the picture of fear; but Peace forestalled the blow by crying, "Let her be, Tobias McGee. She can talk if she wants to."

The boy flushed angrily and muttered, "She's always b.u.t.ting in. She's a reg'lar tattle-tale."

"Well, you're a reg'lar coward," Peace sputtered. "She's lots littler than you."

"I wouldn't have hit her."

"You would, too," Vinie removed her thumb long enough to say.

"If you're going to fight, you can go straight home," Peace interposed.

"Mrs. Wood wants Billy to grow up a gentleman."

"We ain't fighting," they chorused indignantly.

"You looked like it all right. You're always jawing each other, and I don't like sc.r.a.ppers."

"We won't jaw any more," they meekly promised, "if you will let us come over and play."

"I--I'll have to ask Mrs. Wood," she stammered, for, while the newcomers interested her, their slovenly appearance made her recoil from any closer contact.

"Then we can't come," wailed Antonio despairingly.

"Why not?"

"'Cause Mrs. Wood don't like us."

"How do you know?"

"She won't let us play with Billy."

"P'r'aps you are too rough."

"We wouldn't hurt him the least speck."

"Maybe it's 'cause you are so dirty."

A chorus of indignant denial arose, but at that moment Mrs. Wood herself appeared at an open window and called for Billy Bolee. Immediately the McGees scattered like startled pheasants, and Peace wonderingly turned her steps toward the house, surprising her hostess as she entered the cool room by the blunt question, "Don't you like the McGee family?"

"Why--er--I can get along nicely without their company," Mrs. Wood answered evasively.

"But what's the matter with them?" Peace insisted.

"Nothing, I guess, except they are never clean," laughed the woman, and Gail looked up from a letter she was writing long enough to ask, "Who are the McGees, Peace? Your latest acquaintances?"

"Mrs. McGee is a widow who takes in washing," explained their hostess, without giving Peace a chance to make reply. "She and her seven children live in that three-room shack across the field. When her husband died she took plain sewing to do for a time, but couldn't earn enough at it to keep her family from want, so she turned to the washtubs. She does her work well or did at first, but of late she has attempted more than she can handle satisfactorily, and has grown so careless that several of us have had to take our washings elsewhere."

"'Twasn't careless," Peace interrupted earnestly. "It's her tubs. They are so old and rusty now."

"Then she should get new ones if she expects people to hire her. I can't afford to send my clothes to the wash and have them come back all spotted up with iron-rust. It is almost impossible to get it out."

"I guess maybe she hasn't money enough to buy more tubs," Peace hazarded. "All her milk customers are quitting her."

"I can't say that I blame them," Keturah Wood shrugged her shapely shoulders.

"Did _you_ quit her?"

"No, I never took milk from there."

"Ain't it good milk?"

"It ought to be. Their cow is a Holstein and gives lots of milk. But someway I can't stomach the children."

"Can't stomach the children?" echoed Peace wonderingly.

"They are so dirty," Mrs. Wood explained in apologetic tones. "Mrs. McGee used to keep them as neat as pins when I first came here to live, and her kitchen was simply spotless. But she has too much to attend to now, and the children run wild."

"Would you get your milk there if they were clean?"