But Mary-'Gusta, although she liked boys and girls well enough, never showed a liking for one more than the other and she was too busy at the house and in the store to have her young friends hanging about.

They bothered her, she said.

As for having a particular friend of the other sex, which some of the girls in her class no older than she seemed to think a necessary proof of being in their teens, she laughed at the idea.

She had her adopted uncles and Isaiah to take care of and boy beaux were silly.

Talking about them as these girls did was sillier still.
That summer--the summer preceding Mary-'Gusta's fifteenth birthday--was the liveliest South Harniss had known.