“I should go straight home to papa, and tell him everything—everything!” was Fanchon’s answer.
“But have you a great deal to tell him?”
“I have—oh, I have. I am a miserable girl! That odious—that vulgar—that detestable bangle—is that what I am to have in the end? She probably did exchange it for the real one, because she wanted to wear the real one herself. Oh, girls—how am I to endure it!”
“Buck up, whatever you do,” said Nina; “and remember your promise.”
“Oh—how I hate promises!” said Fanchon. “I want to fly at her now, horrid thing! and confront her with the truth.”
“Well, you can’t anyhow for the present, on account of your promise,” said Josie.
“Perhaps to-night you may talk to her, but certainly not before; and it’s time for us to be going down to the sands,” said Nina. “We’ll lose all our morning’s fun if we don’t. I want to get some of those buns from the little old woman who brings them round in her basket. I’ll get Brenda to buy them for us; I’m ever so hungry, and I’m not going to be afraid of Brenda to-day.”
“You’ll have to take your notebook,” said Fanchon; and then she gave a half-laugh.
“I!” exclaimed Nina. “Not I. I think the time of tyranny with Brenda is nearly over.”
The girls put on their hats, and strolled down to the beach. Brenda was there looking quite happy and unconcerned. She called Fanchon a little aside, and desired the younger girls to amuse themselves building castles in the sand.