mottled a dull, ugly purple, as if rough hands had been there.
Mary Elizabeth flushed. "Ain't you ever had any bruises on you ?" she inquired in a tone so finely modulated that Delia actually hastened to defend herself from the impeachment of inexperience.
"Sure," she said heartily. "I counted 'em last night. I got seven."
"I got five and a great long skin," Betty com- peted hotly.
"Pooh," said Calista, "I've got a scratch longer than my hand is. Teacher said maybe I'd get an infect," she added importantly.
Then we kept on neutral ground, such as blank-books and Fourth of July and planning to go bare-foot some day, until Calista attacked a pickled peach which she had brought.
"Our whole cellar's full of pickled peaches," I incautiously observed. "I could have brought some if I'd thought."
"We got more than that," said Delia, instantly. "We got a thousand glasses of jelly left over from last year."
"A thousand!" repeated Margaret Amelia, in derision. "A hundred, you mean."
