As they left the campus, Georgia, leading with Billie, took the street that led to the bluffs overlooking the lake, and somehow or other in the scramble down the narrow pathways, Kit found Frank at her elbow. No one could have been more dignified or distant in her manner than Kit, but Frank refused to be frozen out.
“I’ve just found out something, Kit,” he said genially. “I forgave you long ago for locking me up in your corncrib and nearly landing me in the local jail, but you don’t forgive me one bit for trespassing in your berry patch.”
Kit’s profile tilted ever so slightly upward. She had thoroughly made up her mind that very day when Mr. Hicks made his memorable and fruitless journey to Woodhow that not even government experts had any right to climb over fences into people’s private property without first asking permission. Perhaps the sudden popularity of the trespasser with all the rest of the family had something to do with Kit’s stand against him. Even Doris had remarked that she didn’t see how Kit could ever have imagined that a person looking like Frank could be a berry thief.
“I don’t want you to forgive me,” she said calmly. “I’ve never been one bit sorry for it. I think you ought to have come up to the house and asked permission to go in there. And you never said that you were sorry. It always seemed to me as if you rather acted as if you thought it was a good joke”—she hesitated a moment, before adding pointedly—“on me.”
“Suppose I apologize now.” Frank’s tone was absolutely serious, but Kit, with one quick look at the precipitous path ahead of them, laughed.
“Not here, please. Wait until we hit the level shore. You do really have to pay attention on this path, or you miss your footing and toboggan all at once.”
“Then, suppose,” he persisted, “we just consider that I have apologized. And if you accept, you can raise your right hand at me.”
Kit immediately raised her left one. Before he could say any more, she had hurried ahead and caught up with the rest.