“You’ll go with me to-morrow,” she declared, “but next day you’ll go with some other girl.”
Elizabeth shrank into herself, shaking her head.
Olga eyed her sternly. “Very well—if you won’t go with some other girl, you can’t go with me to-morrow,” she declared.
But the next day after breakfast the two set off for Slabtown. Halfway there, Elizabeth suddenly crumpled up and dropped in a limp heap by the roadside.
“What’s the matter?” Olga demanded, standing over her.
Elizabeth lifted tired eyes. “I don’t know. You walked so—fast,” she panted.
“Fast!” echoed Olga scornfully; but she sat on a stone wall and waited until a little colour had crept back into the other girl’s thin cheeks, and went at a slower pace afterwards.
“There! Do that every day for a week and you’ll have one of your red beads,” was her comment when they were back at camp. “And now go lie in that hammock.”
When from the kitchen she brought a glass of milk and some crackers, she found Elizabeth sitting on the ground.
“Why didn’t you get into the hammock as I told you?” she demanded, and the Poor Thing answered vaguely that she “thought maybe they wouldn’t want” her to.