“You didn’t have to.  Don’t you suppose I can see?”

“Don’t get so mad about it.  She was laughing at you last night and so was the Doctor.  They didn’t think it was nice for you to put on your knickers and swing on the trapeze.  Ladies don’t do that.”

“You taught me,” she reminded him, quickly.

“Yes, but I didn’t ask you to do it before everybody.  You started it yourself.  Isabel wouldn’t look at you, and you remember what the Doctor said, don’t you?  He told you to cut it out.”

“That was because he thought it was dangerous.”

“’Tisn’t dangerous, and he knows it.  He knew it wasn’t refined and lady-like for you to do that before men.”

“It was only a doctor,” Juliet replied, in a small, thin voice.  “They’re different from other people.  I wouldn’t let the Kents see me in my knickers, and you know it.”

“You would, too, if you wanted to.  You’re a perfect tomboy.  You wouldn’t see Isabel doing that.”

“Probably not,” answered Juliet, dryly.  “She’s no more likely to do that than I would be to go back on the man I’d promised to marry, just because his hand was hurt.”

“You’ll never have a chance to go back on anybody, so you don’t know what you’d do.”

“Why won’t I?”

“Because,” answered Romeo, choosing his words carefully, “when a man gets married, he wants to marry a lady, not a tomboy.”  For some unknown reason, he resented any slur cast at Isabel.

“And,” replied Juliet, cuttingly, “when a lady gets married, she wants to marry a gentleman.”  The accent carried insult with it, and Romeo left the house, slamming the door and whistling, defiantly until he was out of hearing.

There was no longer any need for Juliet to keep back the tears.  Stretched at full length upon the disembowelled sofa, she buried her face in the pillow and wept until she could weep no more.  Then she bathed her face, and pinned up her tangled hair, and went to the one long mirror the Crosby mansion boasted of, to take an inventory of herself.

She could see that Romeo was right—­she didn’t look like a lady.  Her skirt was too, short and didn’t hang evenly, and her belt was wrong because she had no corsets.  Juliet made a wry face at the thought of a corset.  None of her clothes fitted like Isabel’s, her face was tanned, her hands rough and red, and her nails impossible.

“I look just like a boy,” Juliet admitted to herself, “dressed up in girl’s clothes.  If Romie’s hair was long, and he had on this dress, he’d look just like me.”

Pride forbade her to go to Isabel and inquire into the mysteries of her all-pervading femininity.  Anyhow, Isabel would laugh at her.  Anybody would laugh at her—­unless Miss Bernard—­but she had gone away.  She was a lady, even more than Isabel, and so was the little old lady everybody called “Aunt Francesca.”

If she could see “Aunt Francesca,” she wouldn’t be ashamed to tell her what Romeo had said.  If she only knew what to do, she could do it, for she had plenty of money.  Juliet dimly discerned that money was very necessary if one would be the same sort of “lady” that the others were.