“Are you not going to play with yours?” asked Maggie, rather reproachfully.
Belle colored a little, and said with some hesitation,—
“I wanted to save them.”
Belle was not like some children who would rather enjoy a nice thing by themselves, and the others were surprised.
Now Belle would have been ready enough to tell Maggie and Bessie why she wanted to keep the grapes, but she did not care to do so before the young visitors; lest as she afterwards said, they should think she was “proud of herself for doing it.”
“She thinks we’ll give her some of ours, and then she’ll eat up her own afterwards,” said Minnie Barlow, one of the little guests.
“I don’t either,” said Belle, flushing angrily: “I wouldn’t eat one of your old grapes, not if you begged and begged me to.”
“No,” said Bessie, putting her arm about Belle’s neck: “Belle never does greedy things. I know she has a very excellent reason if she don’t eat them. Are you sick, Belle?”
“No,” said Belle; and then she whispered in Bessie’s ear, “but poor Daphne is sick, and I am going to keep my grapes for her. She likes them very much.”
“And I’ll give you mine for her too,” said Bessie, “yours make only a few for her when she is sick.” Then she said aloud: “I’m going to keep my grapes too; and Maggie, I think you’d keep yours, if you knew the circumstance.”