“But, oh Betty! Betty! say, please say, was it you?”
“I am going to reveal no secrets,” said Betty. “I said I saw the girl. Well, I did see her.”
“Then she must have been you! She must have been you!” echoed voice after voice. “And were you really nearly killed in the snow? And did you fall asleep in your snow-bed? And did—oh, did the fairies come, and afterwards the angels? Oh Betty, do tell!”
But Betty’s lips were mute.
CHAPTER XIII
A SPOKE IN HER WHEEL
If Betty Vivian really wished to keep her miserable secret, she had done wisely in removing the little packet from its shelter in the trunk of the old oak-tree; for of course Sibyl remembered it in the night, although Betty’s wonderful story had carried her thoughts far away from such trivial matters for the time being. Nevertheless, when she awoke in the night, and thought of the fairies in the heather, and of the girl lying in the snow-bed, she thought also of Betty standing by the stump of a tree and removing something from within, looking at it, and putting it back again.
Sibyl, therefore, took the earliest opportunity of telling her special friends that there was a treasure hidden in the stump of the old tree. In short, she repeated Betty’s exact action, doing so in the presence of Martha West.
Martha was a girl who invariably kept in touch with the younger girls. There are girls who in being removed from a lower to an upper school cannot stand their elevation, and are apt to be a little queer and giddy; they have not quite got their balance. Such girls could not fall into more excellent hands than those of Martha. She heard Sibyl now chatting to a host of these younger girls, and, catching Betty’s name, asked immediately what it was all about. Sibyl repeated the story with much gusto.