"S'pose some one asks me?" she said.
Kate coloured in her turn, and hesitated.
"Say you don't know anything about it," said Mary Merton. "It is true enough: you don't. You had nothing to do with the clock."
"But I know about it," answered Bessie; "I saw what did happen to it, and I heard that noise it made; and I know something pretty much is the matter with it. Once Fred threw his ball in our nursery, and it knocked down the clock, and it made just that noise, and was so spoiled papa had to buy another one. But Fred went right away and told papa," she added, as a hint to her hearers of the course she thought they ought to take.
"Telling one's papa is a different thing from telling Mrs. Ashton," said Mary. "She will be so furious if she finds out how it happened."
"Ah, that is it!" said Kate: "I would not hesitate a moment to tell her I had broken the clock; but how can I tell her how it came about?"
"And I shall get into trouble too," said Fanny, in her fretful tones. "Girls, what shall we do?"
"Do!" repeated Mary Merton. "There is but one thing to do, and that is to stand by one another. There are only four of us here, and none of us know anything about it—that is all. As for you, little tell-tale, if you have a word to say about it, remember that it is your friend Kate you will get into a peck of trouble."
"I'm not a tell-tale!" said Bessie indignantly, keeping down her temper with great difficulty. "I'm not a tell-tale; and if you don't want me to, I won't tell any one the clock is broken, not even my dear mamma, or my own Maggie. I s'pose I needn't when I didn't do it myself. But if Mrs. Ashton asks about it, I'll have to tell her."
"Why don't you run quick, and tell her all about it now?" sneered Mary. "You can get us all nicely punished, if you make a good story of it. Go, tell-tale, go!"