“Would you like to know who it was that did it, Dale?”
“Yes, if you like to tell; but— And if he treats you ill, after the way you used him, he cannot expect you should consider him so— Besides, I am your best friend; and I always tell you everything!”
“Yes, that you do. And he has treated me so shamefully to-day! And I have nobody to speak to that knows. You will promise never—never to tell anybody as long as you live.”
“To be sure,” said Dale.
“And you won’t tell anybody that I have told you.”
“To be sure not.”
“Well, then—”
Here there was a rustling among the reeds which startled them both, with a sort of guilty feeling. It was Holt, quite out of breath.
“I don’t want to interrupt you,” said he, “and I know you wish I would not come; but the others made me come. The biggest boys lay that the second-size can’t jump the brook at the willow-stump; and the second-size boys want Dale to try. They made me come. I could not help it.”
Hugh looked at Dale, with eyes which said, as plainly as eyes could speak, “You will not go—you will not leave me at such a moment?”