grown men and women don't know how to help matters, you little girls
can't expect to fix things either. All you can do is to go on being
nice to Camilla and--"

Judith broke in here hotly, "You don't mean we oughtn't to _do_
something about the girls being so mean to them--not letting Camilla
go to the picnic and--"

"What _could_ you do?" asked her father quietly, "that would make
things any better for Camilla? If you were forty times as strong as
you are, you couldn't make the other girls _want_ Camilla at the
picnic. It would only spoil the picnic and wouldn't help Camilla a
bit." Professor Marshall meditated a moment, and went on, "Of course
I'm proud of my little daughters for being kind to friends who are
unhappy through no fault of theirs" (Sylvia winced at this, and
thought of confessing that she was very near running away and leaving
Camilla to her fate), "and I hope you'll go on being as nice to your
unfortunate friends as ever--"

Judith said: "They aren't friends of mine! I don't like them!"

As not infrequently happened, something about Judith's attitude had
been irritating her father, and he now said with some severity, "Then
it's a case where Sylvia's loving heart can do more good than your
anger, though you evidently think it very fine of you to feel that!"

Judith looked down in a stubborn silence, and Sylvia drooped miserably
in the consciousness of receiving undeserved praise. She opened her
mouth to explain her vacillations of the morning, but her moral fiber
was not equal to the effort. She felt very unhappy to have Judith