"Highty tighty. Do you suppose I'm going to take impertinence from a little chit like you? You know perfectly well where Annie Forest has gone, and it is your duty to tell."
"I won't tell. There!"
"Ah!" laughed Nora, now thoroughly exasperated. "I guessed you had a secret. I knew it when I saw you shutting up your lips so straightly, and putting on that little demure expression whenever Annie's name was mentioned. Now you have confessed it."
"I have confessed nothing," said Kitty in alarm.
"Yes, you have; you said you wouldn't tell. How could you say you wouldn't tell if you had nothing to tell? I know mother is uneasy about Annie, and I know Jane Macalister is uneasy, and you know where she is and you dare to keep them in suspense. Come along to mother at once. She'll soon get this secret out of you."
"I won't go, Nora—I won't. I'll climb up into this tree, where you can't catch me. Here," continued Kitty, suiting the action to the word, "you can't catch me up here; you can't. I won't go to mother—no, I won't."
"You will if I make you," said Nora. "You think I can't climb."
"You wouldn't dare to climb!" exclaimed Kitty, shouting down from the foliage of the tree into which she had hastily swung herself. "You'll get your frock all torn, and Molly and Jane will be just mad. You daren't climb, Nora—you daren't. You can't catch me Nora—you can't."
Nora had a quick temper, and Kitty's manner was most exasperating. Under ordinary circumstances the ladylike Nora would have hated climbing trees, but now all was forgotten in her fierce desire to lay hold of the daring, exasperating little Kitty and to force her secret out of her. How dared Annie Forest snub Nora and then confide in a baby like Kitty?