“The lord always marries the governess,” she complained earnestly to Grandpa, “but it turns out in the end she is really a princess anyway, so it doesn’t prove anything. I’ll bet he wouldn’t have married her if he didn’t know she was going to turn out to be rich and noble. No, sir, there isn’t one story where the governess stays just a governess, because if she did nobody would ever marry her.”

“Now, don’t be so critical,” rebuked Grandpa. “Read all the books you like but don’t go round criticizing.”

“Well, I just don’t see any sense in the way these people in these books act,” grumbled Marcia. “I should think if anybody could marry whoever he pleased it would be a lord, so what do they make so much fuss about it for?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grandpa stated flatly. “The party that writes up all these stories ought to know whereof he speaks. If that’s the way he likes to have people act, he’s got a right to make them act that way.”

“Marcia’s always crazy,” said Lena.

There was no use talking to anybody because nobody understood anything, except maybe Florrie, who was so anxious to be obliging that she agreed with everybody. Whenever you said outright what you were thinking people stared at you curiously, as if thoughts were something you should keep to yourself.

Still, there was David Gross, even if he was a sissy. Marcia hoped her stepmother wouldn’t find out about her secret intimacy with the Gross family. Lena might tell. Florrie knew about it because she went there with Marcia often. The Grosses lived in the brick house behind the schoolhouse, so that Marcia and Florrie could run in and out (the front door too, and without knocking, at Mrs. Gross’s own insistence) during recess or any time they had a chance. David and Marcia acted out stories they had read or made up together. David’s mother taught Florrie to crochet and to play the piano, but Florrie had to keep her new accomplishment secret from her stepmother for fear She would scold, fearing some future violation of Her own piano which was for looks. David’s mother read out loud to them and let them sit in the living room or play games anywhere in the house, make fudge in the kitchen, race up and down stairs or take any books they liked out of the bookcase. Nothing was locked in the Gross home. They had a gramophone and Mrs. Gross explained the stories of operas to them when she played the records. She was a soft-voiced, plain, gentle woman with curly gray hair and ruffled dresses. Florrie worshiped her because she let her hug and kiss her, a privilege Florrie was denied by her self-conscious sisters and even by Papa, since it irritated Her so much to see. She did not look like other mothers in London Junction, but seemed more like somebody’s sister, or like their Cousin Isobel. It was certain that Mrs. Gross was not beautiful the way Aunt Lois was, or like Isobel, but her way of talking and smiling with her eyes, which had unusually heavy lashes, presented a new definition of beauty. It must be Eastern graces, Marcia decided, and determined that she too would go to Philadelphia or Washington when she grew up and learn little ways like Mrs. Gross.