How pleasant the old garden looked this bright May morning, with the early leaves just budding forth, its peach-trees covered with delicate pink blossoms, its crocuses, violets, and tulips all in full bloom, the pigeons dressing their feathers on the stone wall, the guinea hens and two peacocks strutting about, and the sparrows and other small birds twittering and hopping among the branches!
Maggie told where and how she had found the paper.
"And were you not put out when you found it?" said Kate Maynard thoughtlessly.
Maggie looked up into the laughing face, and answered candidly, "Yes, Miss Kate, I was; but I think I'm over that now."
"Maggie was very good indeed about it, Miss Kate," said Bessie quickly. "Nobody could be better. Mamma was very much pleased with her."
"Maggie is just a great deal too good," said Dora Johnson. "She ought to have left it in the drawer, and not said a word about it. I would have, and good enough for that proudy."
"Dora," said Miss Ashton, "I do not think you would have done a thing like that, would you, my dear?"
"Well'm," said Dora, "if it had been for myself, maybe I wouldn't; but if I had known Gracie's composition was there, I wouldn't have told her to make a chance against Maggie."
"I wouldn't either," said Bella. "Let's throw it away again, and not tell Gracie;" and, quick and impulsive as she always was, she snatched the unlucky paper from Miss Ashton's hand, and tossed it with all her little strength out of the window.
What would Gracie have said to see her much-thought-of composition so scornfully handled? But it did not come to much further harm. Falling upon the roof of the piazza below, it only rolled down to the edge and lay there.