“We really must be going on,” Sarah said.
The rest of the walk was a silent one. Sarah and Blue Bonnet were the last to separate; as they stopped at the Clyde gate, Sarah said, a little hesitatingly, “I’m sorry—it happened, Blue Bonnet; but Kitty doesn’t mean all she does—or says; I daresay she’s sorry too, by now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Blue Bonnet answered, turning to go in; then she came back. “That wasn’t true, it does matter! And—and you’ve been awfully good to me all this week, Sarah; I’ll never, never forget it!” Leaning over the gate, she gave Sarah a hasty good night kiss, and ran off up the walk.
Mrs. Clyde and Miss Lucinda were out making calls, Delia told her. “I hope,” she added, a laugh in her kind, Irish-gray eyes, “that you’ll be finding the parlor dusted to your liking, miss.”
Blue Bonnet laughed. “If Aunt Lucinda was suited, I am. Thank you so much, Delia.”
She was waiting on the veranda when the carriage drew up before the steps a few moments later. “I’m glad you’re not going to make a formal call here,” she told Grandmother and Aunt Lucinda; “and for once, I got home first.”
“You left first,” Miss Lucinda answered.
Blue Bonnet’s eyes danced. “But you see, I just had to get Mrs. Blake’s waist home; it was considerably overdue as it was.”
Grandmother sat down on one of the veranda benches. “What I don’t understand is how it came to be in your possession.”
Blue Bonnet came to sit at the other end of the bench. “I begin to think I was born to trouble; and my intentions—in this case, at least—were so good. Netty Morrow would have had ever so long a walk, and there was Peter and the phaeton. I got the other two home all right; I can’t understand how I came to miss that one. Mrs. Blake was awfully nice about it. I think she was simply born to be a minister’s wife, she makes such a beautiful one.”