'Don't be a young silly,' said Ruth, good-naturedly, a reply which had no effect whatever upon Barbara.
'It seems to me,' she went on thoughtfully, 'that it's very difficult to know what is wrong and what isn't, when there aren't any punishments and no one is there to tell you.'
'Well, you're supposed to have some sense, you know,' explained Ruth. 'Finny's great idea is that you should think for yourself and not go to other people to find out things. She says being good isn't worth much, if you're only good because some one else tells you to be good.'
'That's all very well,' objected Babs, 'but suppose you don't know without being told?'
'Well, if you don't know that behaving like a wild Indian is wrong, it's not much good being there to tell you so,' said Jean, bluntly.
The point of her remark was quite lost on Barbara, who was still puzzling over a question that had never occurred to her before. 'At home,' she observed, 'we never talk about whether a thing is right or wrong. If we did, the boys would call it awfully slack.'
'What do they call it when you nearly kill people by knocking them down and hitting them?' asked Jean, rather suddenly. The application of hot water was causing the bruise on her forehead to smart most unpleasantly.
'Oh!' said Barbara, in a surprised tone; 'I thought you had made it up?'
'Bother making it up,' grumbled Jean, 'when you've got a lump as big as----'
'Why didn't you say so before?' cried Babs, in great concern. 'Haven't you any pomade to put on it?'
Something very like an amused chuckle came from the direction of Ruth Oliver, but Babs was in far too great a hurry to notice that. Flinging everything right and left on the floor, she cleared out two drawers and a box before she succeeded in finding the bottle she wanted.
'Here it is!' she exclaimed, taking it in to her wounded foe. 'It's awfully good stuff, really; and it keeps you from turning blue and yellow. We always use it at home.'
Ruth's chuckle grew into a hearty laugh. 'I should think you wanted pounds of it in your home, if they're all like you!' she exclaimed.
Barbara wondered what the joke was. 'They're not like me,' she said simply. 'The others are all boys, you see, so they get their own way without fighting.'