worse," said Mrs. Lorimer. "Of course they're only children—babies, really—but I couldn't have anything.... It's bad blood, Stephen. I couldn't have my child interested in one of the 'Wild Kings'!"

"Well, you won't have, if you're wise. Let 'em alone. Let 'em lace footballs on the front lawn ... and they won't hold hands on the side porch! Why, woman dear, like the well-known Mr. Job, the thing you greatly fear you'll bring to pass! Shut her up in a girls' school—even the best and sanest—and you'll make boys suddenly into creatures of romance, remote, desirable. Don't emphasize and underline for her. She's as clean as a star and as unself-conscious as a puppy! Don't hurry her into what one of those English play-writing chaps calls—Granville Barker, isn't it?—Yes,—Madras House—'the barnyard drama of sex.... Male and female created[Pg 14] He them ... but men and women are a long time in the making!'"

[Pg 14]

The lacing of the football was finished. The boy lifted his head and looked soberly at the door through which his father had entered, not quite steadily. Then he drew a long breath, threw back his shining bronze head, said something in a low tone to the girl, and ran into the house.

Honor Carmody got to her feet and stood looking after him, the odd mothering look in her square child's face. She stood so for long moments, without moving, and her mother and her stepfather watched her.

Suddenly Stephen Lorimer flung the window up as far as it would go and leaned out.

"It's all right, Top Step," he called, meeting the leaping gladness of her glance. "We've decided, your mother and I. You're going to L. A. High! You're going——" but now he dropped his voice and spoke only for the woman beside him, slipping a penitent and conciliatory arm about her, his eyes impish, "you're going to run with the boys!"

[Pg 15]

[Pg 15]

CHAPTER II

The "Wild Kings" had lived in their fine old house ever since the neighborhood could remember. The first and probably the wildest of them had come out from Virginia when Los Angeles was still a drowsing Spanish village, bringing with him an aged and excellent cellar and a flock of negro servants. Honor's Carmody grandmother could remember the picturesqueness of his entourage, of James King himself, the hard-riding, hard-drinking, soft-spoken cavalier with 

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