“The powers that be shouldn’t have sent such a horrid substitute!” Debby insisted.
Contrary to her usual habit, Blue Bonnet did not go into the sitting-room on reaching home, but straight on up to her own room. Curling herself up in the window-seat overlooking the bare, rain-swept garden, she tried to think things over; knowing all the while that for her there was no choice.
“I am going to put you on your honor not to disobey in this fashion again; and so try to conform more carefully to all the rules of the school.” The words had been running through her mind all the way home.
She had promised.
The girls would think that she was—Blue Bonnet moved restlessly; they must think what they would. Oh, why had Mademoiselle gone and got the grip! If it had not been for what Kitty had said about it’s being a class affair, she could have gone to Mr. Hunt and asked him to release her from her promise. He would have understood. He had understood perfectly that morning; and been so kind.
“Solomon,” she said wearily, as he came rubbing against her, asking reproachfully why she had left it for him to find out that she had got home, “Solomon, old chap, we’re up against it!”
Solomon jumped up beside her, sticking his cold nose under her soft chin.
“If it isn’t one thing, it’s another, at school, Solomon,” she told him. “Be mighty thankful you don’t have to go to school, sir.”
It was a very sober Blue Bonnet who came down at last to the sitting-room, where Grandmother and Aunt Lucinda waited anxiously, Aunt Lucinda being of Blue Bonnet’s own mind—that if it were not one thing, it was apt to be another.
“Did you get wet, dear?” Grandmother asked.