"No, but I'm sure he thinks I did that. He's not an unkind man, and he really doesn't want to make me unhappy, and drive you all away, I know. Mrs. Chester, won't you send me away?"
"Nonsense, Bessie! If you haven't done anything wrong, why shouldn't we stand by you? Even if you had, we'd do that, and we ought to do it all the more when you're in the right, and unjustly suspected. Don't you worry about it a bit! Everything will be all right."
"But I really think you ought to let me go. I'm just a trouble maker—I make trouble for everyone! If it hadn't been for me, Jake Hoover would never have burnt his father's barn—don't you know that?"
"That isn't so, Bessie. If you hadn't been there, something else would have happened. And it's the same way here. You haven't anything to do with all this trouble here. It would have come just the same if you hadn't arrived at all, I'm sure of that. And then one of the girls would have been accused, and everything would have happened just the same."
"Oh, I'm afraid not!"
"But I'm sure of it, Bessie, and I really know better than you. You mustn't take it so hard. No one is going to blame you. Rest easy about that. I'll see to it that they all understand just how it is."
"I wish I could believe that!"
Mrs. Chester told Eleanor what General Seeley had said as soon as they returned to the camp, and Eleanor, after a moment, just laughed.
"Well, it can't be helped," she said. "If he wants to act that way, we can't stop him, can we? And I'm so glad that you're going to stick by poor Bessie. I know she feels as bad as she can feel about it—and it's so fine for her to know that she really has some friends who will trust her and believe her at last. She's never had them before."
"She has them now, Eleanor. And it's because you're so fond of her already that I'm so sure she's telling the truth. I think I'd trust her, anyhow, but, even if I'd never seen her, I'd take your word."