she could do so before he outran her and left her, panting and
still wrathful, on the curb.

The other boys backed away, leaving Arlo Junior to fight his own
battle--or run, if that seemed to him the part of wisdom, as
evidently it had.

"I hope that will teach you to bring cats into our kitchen, Arlo
Junior!" Janice cried after him.

"No, 'twon't," declared the boy, rubbing the ear that had
received the greater number of her blows. "I knew how to do it
before, didn't I? My, Janice Day! but you can slam a fella."

"I wish I could hurt you more," declared the girl. "You've made
me enough trouble."

She marched on, leaving the scattered crowd of urchins to gather
again about Arlo Junior, but now in a scoffing rather than in an
admiring crowd. The bubble of Arlo Junior's conceit had been
punctured. He had been whipped by a girl!

"Now," thought Janice, as she went along home, "I would not want
Daddy to know I did that. Fighting a boy on the street! I guess
Miss Peckham, who is always peering through her blinds at what I
do, if she had seen me would be sure to say I was misbehaving
because I had no mother to make me mind. As though I wouldn't
behave just as well for Daddy as I used to for dear mother!

"Only I haven't really behaved very well to-day," she went on,