“I only wish you were a boy!” Boyd said.
“I’d like well to be—for a few moments,” Blue Bonnet answered, turning away.
Boyd did not follow her; instead he wandered off to the lower end of the yard, out of sight of the lantern-lighted barn, but not out of hearing of the fiddle played by Amanda’s Uncle Dave. Leaning against the old stone wall, the boy stared miserably out over the broad moonlit meadow.
The worst of it was that he did not know what Blue Bonnet would do now. As things were, it would be just his luck for that paper to take a prize. It ought to, considering how carefully Alec had prepared those notes; there had been very little left for him to do, beyond putting them together. He wouldn’t have bothered about writing a paper at all—what did he care for Woodford customs?—except that his grandfather had seemed to expect it, and he wanted to keep on the right side of his grandfather—for various reasons. Alec shouldn’t have left the notes lying around, he knew he had been hunting for a subject; and anyhow, they were only notes—taken from books; he wouldn’t have thought of taking a real paper. There would have been plenty of time for Alec to get up another one; it was the sort of thing he liked doing. If only Blue Bonnet had not—Alec could have been depended on not to tell; he had not referred to the matter since—Boyd moved impatiently; that brief interview between his cousin and himself was one of the things he preferred to forget.
It was all a horrid mess whatever way you looked at it; he would be mighty glad when school closed; next fall he should be going back to his own school; he never wanted to see Woodford again.
In the meantime, he supposed that Amanda girl was wondering where her partner for this last dance was? She would have to wonder, that was all.
They were finishing the dance as he went back to the barn. Amanda received his murmured apology about a sudden headache in indignant silence; she didn’t believe he had a headache.
More than once, during the ride home, Boyd felt Kitty’s inquisitive eyes upon him. “Why aren’t you singing with the rest of us?” she demanded at last.
“I’d rather listen.”
“You didn’t look as if you were doing even that,” Kitty remarked.