"By all means--you!" Miss Juliana sharpened her tone She added,
mysteriously: "It would be good without you--good, but not perfect."

"Now I guess you'll learn how to behave yourself in future!" admonished
Merle, the preacher, and edged toward Miss Juliana as one withdrawing
from contamination.

"Oh, not me!" pleaded the voice of Wilbur.

"I think you heard me," said Miss Juliana. "Come!"

She uttered "come" so that not mountains would have dared stay, much
less a frightened little boy in a girl's dress. In his proper garb there
had been instant and contemptuous flight. But the dress debased all his
manly instincts. He came crawling, as the worm. The recent Ben Blunt
pulled a cap over a shorn head and advanced stoically before the group.

"One moment," said Miss Juliana. "We seem to be forgetting something."
She indicated the hat of Patricia Whipple lying on the ground near where
smouldered the two ends of the abandoned pennygrab. "I think you might
resume this, my dear, and restore the cap to its rightful owner." It was
but a further play of her debased fancy. The mere street urchin was now
decked in a girl's hat and a presumable girl wore an incongruous cap. "I
will ask you two rare specimens to precede me," she said when the change
was made. They preceded her.

"I don't care!" This was more bravado from the urchin.

"Well, don't you care!" Juliana said it, soothingly.