I saw from their flushed faces that they had, indeed, made some discovery; but instead of confiding in me at once, as I naturally expected them to do, they glanced guiltily at each other like two conspirators.
“Aren’t you going to tell me?” I demanded. “I don’t think that’s fair!”
“Well, you see, Biffkins,” began Dick, stammeringly, “this isn’t anything for—for a girl to know.”
“It isn’t?” I cried, my temper rising at such duplicity. “I should just like to know why? Perhaps you think I couldn’t help?”
“No,” replied Dick, grinning fiendishly, as he always did whenever I grew angry; “I don’t believe you could!”
I gasped with astonishment at the absurdity of such a thing, and glared at Tom Chester, whose face was as crimson as my own. And to think that only a short while before he had danced around the table to shake hands with me in an alliance offensive and defensive! His treason fairly took my breath away. And I had thought him a nice boy, upon whom one could rely! I felt the hot tears rushing into my eyes; then my pride asserted itself; and crushing them back, I tossed up my head and scorched them both with a single fiery glance.
“Oh, very well!” I said, and marched from the room.
Chapter VIII
The House Beautiful
The dawn, streaming in through the window, awakened me, and, incapable of lying still a moment longer, I climbed down softly from the four-poster, without awakening mother. I hurried into my clothes, and down the stairs to the lower hall, which seemed alarmingly grim and gloomy in the dim light. I paused an instant to give the big grandfather’s clock a little friendly pat—it seemed so kind and fatherly ticking leisurely away there in the gloom, a sober survival of that stately period when time walked instead of ran.
I had a hard struggle with the big wrought-iron bolt of the front door, but finally it yielded, and I swung the door open and stepped out upon the porch.