“Why don’t they go down to that new Athletic Club just opened on the Square?” persisted Mr. Taylor. “Swimming pool, sand piles, games. I seen kids running in and out. Free, too.”

Papa hadn’t heard of this and listened with interest. To the girls, the idea sounded so entrancing that they looked at Mr. Taylor more favorably, and were glad when Papa urged them to get into street clothes. In Papa’s impressive company, they were positive no snubs could occur. Papa led them straight to the big new building with the football field beyond it and tennis courts in front. At the “Children’s Entrance” he bade them have a good time and he’d come after them at five to take them home on the streetcar. Lena, with a great show of assurance, led them to some stairs marked “Swimming Pool” but a buxom young woman in a bathing suit said they must bring bathing suits for the Pool. Having none to command, Lena then led them to the Gymnasium, where children were riding stationary bicycles, tumbling on mattresses, climbing monkey cages, chinning themselves, and playing ball. They did not need to be told that here also a costume was necessary, since all the girls wore bloomers and middies, absent from the Willards’ wardrobe. Florrie, unconscious of this, flung herself joyously into a double somersault, exposing her underpants to the jeers of some small boys until Lena hastily dragged her away. Another room yielded a group listening to a Story Teller, but a glance indicated that these drab, bespectacled, morose little folks were the doomed ones, left out of everything else and unpopular, so to join them would certainly be admission of defeat.

“That old story!” Marcia scornfully exclaimed as they withdrew. “Everybody knows ‘Peter Pan’!”

“I don’t,” said Florrie, hanging back.

“Come on, then, I’ll tell you,” Marcia said, and inasmuch as she had heard of Peter Pan only dimly she made up a hasty story about a magic boy who lived in a skillet and granted wishes to a kitchen slavey when anything beginning with a “b” was cooked in the pan, but caused an earthquake if by some horrible chance cornmeal mush was ever cooked in it.

Wandering through the bare whitewashed corridors, they peeked in several rooms where gym classes were in progress, but there seemed no possible way of joining any group. These other boys and girls seemed to have been born in bunches, happily complete, looking with indifferent, even hostile, gaze at the three strangers. In one room an empty Ping-Pong table inspired them to experiment with the game, but two young ladies appeared and calmly announced they had “signed” for that hour. They finally found a Reading Room with a checkerboard in it but no checkers or any reading matter as yet, equipped merely with empty shelves and a long table and a Silence, Please, sign.

“I’ll bet Mr. Taylor knew all the time it would be this way,” said Marcia, as they sat down on the chairs. They played “I Love My Love With an A” for a while, then strolled out to the hall where a lady sat at a desk, with a green reading shade over her eyes.