“I have got news for you,” said Jane, making her mouth into a round “O,” and forming a trumpet for it with her hand. “News!” she repeated. “Wonderful grand news!” and now she managed to shout the words into Harriet’s ear.
“Don’t deafen me,” said Harriet. “I can’t help it if you have news. I don’t suppose there is anything in your new’s,” she continued.
“You are as cross as two sticks, Harry,” said Jane; “but you won’t be when you hear what I have got to say. Come along; I must tell you before we start for home, and they are putting the horses to the waggonettes already. Let’s run down this glade. Let’s be very quick, or they’ll stop us. I see old Sparke coming back as fast as she can, and she’ll begin to call us all to the top of that little mound. It is there we are to wait for the waggonettes. Come—quick!”
Harriet, although she liked Jane, had a secret sort of contempt for her. She could be naughty, of course, but she was not clever. Harriet admired nothing but talent. She believed herself to be a sort of genius.
“I don’t suppose you have anything to tell me,” she repeated; “but I’ll come if you want me to. See, I’ll race you—one, two, three! I’ll get first to that tall tree at the end of the glade.”
In a race with Harriet, Jane was nowhere, for Harriet’s legs were so long and she was so light that she flew almost like the wind over the ground. She easily reached the meeting-place first, and Jane followed her, panting, red in the face, and a little cross.
“You did take the wind out of me,” she said. “Oh, oh, oh!”
She pressed her hand to her side.
“I cannot speak at all for a minute—I—I—can’t—tell you my news. Oh, you have winded me—you have!”
“Don’t talk, then,” said Harriet, who was leaning comfortably with her back against a tree; while Jane, round as a ball and crimson in the face, panted a little way off. By-and-by, however, Jane got back her voice.