Bunty rose to his feet, pale, trembling.
“What is it Esther?” he said. “Nellie—tell me!”
“Only it was young Hawkins after all who took the money,” said Esther, in tones that trembled with gladness for the news, and grief for the poor boy’s unmerited sufferings. “He broke his collar bone at football yesterday, and he thought at first he was going to die; he confessed it to his mother, and made her send word to school. Mr. Burnham has come straight here with the news, and says he can never forgive himself for all you have suffered over it.”
“Oh, Bunty! how hateful we were not to believe you,” said Nellie, wiping her eyes; “we don’t deserve for you to speak to us.”
But Bunty put his poor rough head down on the cushions again, and great hard sobs broke from him, sobs that he was bitterly ashamed of, but that he had absolutely no strength to restrain.
No one would ever know quite how wretched this thing had made him. However warm the welcome home had been, there would always have been that cloud.
The relief was almost too much for him in his weak state.
[150]
]At night, when Meg was tucking Poppet up in bed, the little girl sat up suddenly.
“Meg, that is the most wonderfullest tree in the world,” she said in a low, almost reverential tone.
Meg asked her to explain, and she told how she and Martha had walked backwards three times, around the “wishing-tree” in the Botanical Gardens.