"Why! where has that skin gone to?" she exclaimed.
But although she had not found that for which she was looking, she found something else—something very bad indeed. Belle thought it worse even than that ugly graze upon her foot. There was a great hole in her sock; and, worse and worse, another—a jagged tear—in the little gaiter! She took up the shoe and the sock again, and sat with one in each hand, looking at them with a very sober face.
"There now!" she said at last. "I disobeyed my Aunt Margaret fee things. I came out with these shoes on, that's one; I came down to the ball-ground, that's two; and I climbed the fence, that's fee. She didn't tell me don't climb the fence, but I guess I knew she didn't want me too; so I'm 'fraid it was a disobey. Now I'll have to go and tell her, and then she'll look sorry at me; and I think perhaps she'll punish me, and perhaps papa will know it. Oh dear! I wish I hadn't, I wish I hadn't!" and Belle began to cry.
By and by she stopped crying, wiped her eyes, and began to put on her shoe and stocking. They had come off easily enough; but to put them on was another thing. At last the sock was pulled on after a fashion, all one-sided, and half an inch beyond her toes, for Belle was not used to dressing herself. But, do what she would, she could not put on the shoe. She pulled and pulled till she was quite red in the face, but all in vain; and at last she gave an impatient scream and threw the shoe from her.
"Bad old thing!" she said, and sat a moment frowning at it. But the shoe did not mind being looked cross at, at all; and presently Belle sprang to her feet, and went and picked it up, feeling rather ashamed.
"I am going to Miss Ashton," she said; "and she'll ask me where I went, and I'll tell her."
But just then she heard Bessie's voice. She had quite forgotten that the half-hour for the music-lesson must have gone by, and that it must be time to go home; and there was Bessie running down the garden path and calling to her.
"Belle, Belle! where are you, Belle?"
Bessie had not come to school that morning, for the weather had been so damp that her mother had not thought it safe for her to go out; but as it had cleared up before Jane went for the other children, she had given her leave to go with the nurse.
But, when they came to the school, Belle was not to be found; and some one saying she had been seen to run out in the garden, Bessie went in search of her, while Jane put on Maggie's things.