Other People's Children's Keeper

A little latchkey girl was acting rowdy and when I went to quiet her for the fifth or so time she was unrepentant and insolent so I kicked her out of the library with a stern, "Go play outside in the park, NOW!" I then spent the rest of the afternoon agonizing in a hellfire of guilt, certain that she was being sodomized in the park bathroom by some skid row vagrant. When I went outside on an errand I saw her skipping along across the street, carefree and unmolested, but still unsupervised and on her own. I waved her back in the library, where she spent the rest of the time we were open reading quietly in the corner.