“Perhaps he thought it wasn’t good enough,” Ruth suggested.
“I’m sure I sometimes wish I could withdraw mine,” Amanda sighed.
“It wouldn’t have made any difference; he’d never have got a prize,” Kitty declared.
As she went on up the street after leaving the girls, Blue Bonnet told herself that she knew why Boyd had withdrawn his paper. Perhaps he had told Debby, knowing Debby would tell her among the others. She had scarcely seen him since the night of Amanda’s birthday; to all intents and purposes, he was devoting himself to baseball during most of his out-of-school time.
That relations continued strained between the two cousins it was easy to see; a mere outward semblance of friendliness being kept up on the General’s account.
“Solomon,” Blue Bonnet said, as he came to meet her, “should I have said what I did that night, or shouldn’t I? Maybe it was more or less of a rushing-in business? But it didn’t seem fair not to let him know why one couldn’t dance with him, or be friends. And it was true!”
Solomon appeared perfectly willing to take her word for it.
“What’s the trouble, Honey?” Uncle Cliff asked, as she came across the lawn to the bench where he sat, busy over some papers Uncle Joe had forwarded him.
“Just some school business,” she hadn’t any right to tell even such a close confidant as Uncle Cliff about it. “You don’t get much chance to lead the Simple Life going to school.”
“The twenty-second’s coming nearer every day, Honey.”