Now she walked on, with her head in the air. Lillian did not like David, but now she was almost sorry for the boy: she knew the weight of Madge's displeasure. "David Brewster wants to speak to you, Madge, dear," she whispered in her friend's ear.
Madge made no answer, nor glanced behind her.
"Miss Morton!"—David's face was very white; he was bitterly ashamed—"I am sorry, beastly sorry, I was so rude to you this morning. I was angry, not with you, but about something else. I don't seem to know how to control my temper. Perhaps it is because I am not a gentleman. I would do anything I knew how to serve you." David was not looking at Madge, but on the ground in front of him.
Madge's expression cleared as though by magic. "Never mind, David," she said impulsively. "Let's not think anything more about it. I lose my temper quite as often as any one else. And don't say it is because you are not a gentleman; you are a gentleman, if you wish to be."
The other young people came hurrying on. The clouds were now heavy overhead and the thunder seemed ominously near. The lightning began to streak in forked flames across the summer sky.
"I think everybody had better run for the farm," suggested Phyllis. "Sam says it is only a short distance away."
No one cared to linger any longer in the deserted grounds. The story of the tragic old house, oddly mixed as it was with Harry Sears's ghostly tale and Lillian's fancied apparition of a girl's white face at the window, did not leave a pleasant recollection of the morning spent near Sam's "ha'nted house."
CHAPTER XI
THE FEAST OF MONDAMIN
