And Agnes said, "I'm sorry too, Hugh, that we made a secret of it, for I see now it would have been nicer for you to have known; but I didn't mean to be unkind."
After that they worked on happily together all the morning, though Hugh felt a twinge whenever any one remarked, as Minnie and Alice were apt to do all day, "How funny it seems not to have known."
"It's the last secret I'll have, John, that I can help," said Agnes to him when they were left alone for a few minutes, and were busy pinning up the sheet.
"Yes," answered John, reaching down from the top of the steps, where he was astride, and taking the corner from her outstretched arm, "Yes, Agnes. I don't believe in secrets."
"Nor I," answered Agnes, "I have seen it before, and it will this time be a lesson to me."
"But we didn't quarrel over it, exactly."
"Oh, no; but we might have if you had not remembered in time. I do not mean that I defend Hugh for being so cross over it, but I see once more that nobody likes to have things kept and then given all of a heap."
"You are very lucid."
"Well," she answered, laughing and blushing. "I remember on my seventeenth birthday you all thought it would be nice to give me my presents at tea, and so they were kept all day, and it was a wretched birthday."
John was descending the ladder. "I never knew that," he said.