That flighty Hicks girl went by here this afternoon wearing some.
That Summers boy who clerks in Pieker's grocery was with her. He
once wanted Missy to go walking with him and I had to put my foot
down. She doesn't seem to realize she's too young for such things.
Her brown furs will do her for this season--and next season too!"

Mother put on a stern, determined kind of look, almost hard. Into
the life of every woman who is a mother there comes a time when she
learns, suddenly, that her little girl is trying not to be a little
girl any longer but to become a woman. It is a hard moment for
mothers, and no wonder that they seem unwarrantedly adamantine. Mrs.
Merriam instinctively knew that wanting furs and wanting boys
spelled the same evil. But Missy, who was fifteen instead of thirty-
seven and whose emotions and desires were still as hazy and
uncorrelated as they were acute, stared with bewildered hurt at this
unjust harshness in her usually kind parent.

Then she turned large, pleading eyes upon her father; he had shown
a dawning interest in the subject of white fox furs. But Mr.
Merriam, now, seemed to have lost the issue of furs in the newer
issue of boys.

"What's this about the Summers boy?" he demanded. "It's the first
I've ever heard of this business."

"He only wanted me to go walking, father. All the rest of the girls
go walking with boys." "Indeed! Well, you won't. Nor for a good many
years!"

Such unexpected shortness and sharpness from father made her feel