“You did!” exclaimed the boys in duet.
“I sure did,” she repeated with a solemn nod.
This was too much for her companions and the woodland bordering the road echoed to their shouts. When they had regained some self-control Athol asked:
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“Do? I’m going to stop at the branch and scrub some of this mud off Apache and myself, for if we show up like this mother will think I’ve been acting ten times worse that I really have, though goodness knows it’s bad enough as it is. I didn’t mean to break my promise, but I couldn’t let you boys put it all over me like you did and not get back at you. Now get out of the way while I clean up, and maybe you could do a little on your own accounts and not suffer for it either. ‘Snowdrift!’ He looks exactly like one after a spring thaw.”
The boys glanced at the beautiful white horse and then at each other. The ensuing fifteen minutes were spent in the vigorous grooming of their steeds, Beverly scrubbing Apache as energetically as Archie and Athol did Royal and Snowdrift. Flat sticks served as scrapers and bunches of dry grass for cloths. When the animals looked a little less like animated mud pies Beverly turned her attention to her riding skirt. To restore that to its pristine freshness might have daunted a professional scourer. The more she rubbed and scrubbed the worse the result and finally, when she was a sight from alternate streaks of mud and wet splotches, she sprang upon the startled Apache crying:
“Come along home quick! If I’ve got to face the music the quicker it’s done the better,” and was off down the road in a fair way to being as muddy when she reached Woodbine as she was when she began her cleansing processes at the branch, while up in one of the dormer windows of the big house her mother stood smiling to herself. It was one of the rare occasions when she had occasion to go to that room for some stored away winter clothing against Beverly’s pending departure for boarding school. As the riders resumed their homeward journey she smiled and said softly:
“How exactly like Beverly. Now will come confession and repentance and shall I be able to keep a sober face?”