"Who gave you permission?"
"Why—why—Mrs. Hunt didn't think you would mind, and—and——"
"Blackberrying! I should think so," exclaimed Mrs. Otway. "What a sight you are, all stained and scratched up. Go, wash your face and hands."
"I did try to get it off at the spring," returned Marian more cheerfully, hoping she was to be let off rather easily after all.
But she had not reached the door before her grandmother called her back. "What in the world have you done to your frock?" she asked, examining her costume in surprise.
"It got torn so and I was so ragged that Stella tore off the skirt," said Marian in faint explanation, "and—" she went on, "she thought she would try to make my petticoat look like a frock; the spots are blackberry juice; they aren't quite the same color, but we all thought they looked pretty well, better than slits and snags."
"Then you have ruined not only your frock but your petticoat. Go to your room and do not come out till I tell you. I will speak to your grandfather and we will see what is to be done about this," said her grandmother in such a severe tone that Marian felt like the worst of criminals and crept to her room in dread distress.
She had not often been seriously punished, but those few times stood out very clearly just now. Once she had been compelled to receive ten sharp strokes from a ruler on her outstretched hand. At another time she had been shut up in a dark closet, and again she had been tied in a chair for some hours. Any of these was bad enough. The first was soonest over, but was the most humiliating, the second was terrifying and nerve racking, while the third tediously long and hard to bear. For some time the child sat tremblingly listening for her grandmother's footsteps, but evidently Mrs. Otway did not intend to use undue haste in the matter. After a while the whistle of the evening train announced that those who had gone up to the city for a day's shopping were now returning, and not long after Miss Dorothy's door opened and Marian could hear the teacher singing softly to herself in the next room.
A new humiliation filled the child's breast. They would tell Miss Dorothy, and she would think of her little friend as some one desperately wicked, too wicked, no doubt, to associate with Patty. The tears stood in Marian's eyes at this possibility. It was very, very wrong, of course, to go off without asking leave, and it was worse to spoil her clothes. She well knew her grandmother's views upon this subject, and that of all things she disapproved of wastefulness. She would say that the clothes might have done good to the poor; they might have been sent in a missionary box to some needy child, and it was wicked and selfish to deprive the poor of something that could be of use.
Oh, yes, Marian knew very well all about the probable lecture in store for her.