It was too bad Almedy would not play with them. She would never sing with them or tell stories.

“They’re all lies,” Almedy stated briefly. “Songs and stories is all the same—lies.”

“We could play a game,” Lena would plead. “We don’t have to go to sleep yet.”

“Games is sinning,” Almedy said, and marched up to her attic bedroom. She never read books. The only time she ever joined them was when they played ghosts once with sheets as shrouds. She entered into this game so zestfully that the children went to bed shivering with terror. After that Almedy would say grimly, “Want to play ghost?” so that they would hastily retreat, leaving her to her favorite relaxation of looking over her colored Sunday school cards.

Papa came down to take them back home in August. Marcia and Lena were so gloomy at leaving that their father was irritated. They wanted Almedy to come home with them as a souvenir of these happy days. Papa grumbled that he guessed it would be all right for Almedy to visit them, but Uncle Louie said the farm couldn’t get along without Almedy.

“Don’t you want to come home with us, Almedy? We’ve got white mice and a gramophone.” They tried to coax her.

Almedy smiled, crookedly.

“When I leave this here place it won’t be for no visit,” she said.

Papa took them home on the train. They chattered all the way about Uncle Louie and Aunt Betts until their father sharply ordered them to hush. Aunt Lois, Grandma, Mama, and Florrie were waiting in the sitting room when they got home. For some reason, after the first rejoicing their mother acted worried.

“They’ve lost all their nice manners,” she said ruefully. “They’ve turned into regular little Indians.”

“Betts is nobody to handle youngsters,” their father agreed. “Wait till you see how they eat.”

“I can eat with a knife,” boasted Marcia.

“See what I mean?” said their father. “I guess next time we take a trip we’ll have to leave them someplace else.”

Everything that had seemed so magical about their summer was now tarnished by their parents’ disapproval. After they were sent to bed, Marcia and Lena gloomily listened to the family council downstairs.

“Never mind, Betts and Louie are all right,” Grandma was saying, consolingly. “They never hurt a fly.”

“You said once they used to drive around together before they were married, drinking in every saloon in the country,” Aunt Lois reminded her. “Everybody knows Betts used to lay around with every traveling man that came to town.”

“They tell me half the kids at the Chapman farm, next to Louie’s, are Louie’s,” said Papa, chuckling. “Look like him, too, the old devil.”

“Remember when Betts was carrying on with that old bachelor at Four Corners?” said Aunt Lois. “Then when he got to wanting younger women she sent her own daughter up to him, just to keep him in the family. That was Ede, the one that went to Iowa.”