"Not a bit of it," answered Jack decisively. "He wouldn't do a thing like that. He stole some fruit once, but he's honest enough now."
"Could the servant have taken it?"
"Oh, no!" answered Queen Mab. "I could trust Jane with anything."
During the afternoon the weather cleared, but no one seemed inclined to do anything; a feeling of gloom and uneasiness lay upon the whole company.
Jack was sitting in a quiet corner reading, when his aunt called him.
"Oh, there you are! I wanted to speak to you alone just for a minute. Helen told me about your quarrel with Raymond, and I want you to make it up. He's going away to-night, and I shouldn't like you to part, except as friends."
The boy frowned. "I don't want to be friends," he answered impatiently. "He's played me some very shabby tricks, and I think the less we see of him the better."
"Perhaps so; but I'm so sorry that you should have actually come to blows, and that while you were staying here with me at Brenlands."
"I'm not sorry! I wish I'd hit him harder!"
"Oh, you 'ugly duckling!'" answered the lady, smiling, and running her fingers through his crumpled hair. "You'll find out some day that 'punching heads,' as you call it, isn't the most satisfactory kind of revenge. However, I don't expect you to believe it now, but I think you'll do what I ask you. Go to Raymond, and say you're sorry you forgot yourself so far as to strike him, and ask his pardon. There, I don't think there is anything in that which need go against your conscience, or that it is a request that any gentleman need be ashamed to make."