"WHO ASKED YOU TO HELP ME OUT?" DEMANDED POLLY.
Polly and Eleanor Page [257]
"If I had had a different training maybe I wouldn't be so ready to lie," murmured Eleanor. Then, suddenly sneering at herself she added: "Poor fish! Can't even accept what you know is a fact without trying to blame it on some one else. You've scorned Bob for being such a fool, but here you are, ten times worse, because you have wits enough yet you pervert the use of them. Eleanor Maynard, I just feel as if I wanted to give you the biggest hiding you ever heard of!"
As she knew of no way in which to inflict this punishment upon herself, she cried instead. From a prolonged sniffle that caused her to wipe her eyes on her dimity sleeves, she began to weep freely. And finally, heart-broken sobs shook her slender frame. By this time her eyes and nose were rivers of salt-water and the poor girl had no handkerchief. Just when she felt compelled to turn up her skirt to use the ruffle of her white petticoat, Anne came in.
"Why, Nolla! What has happened?"
"Oo-h, Anne—I lost my handkerchief!"
"Is that all, darling! Here use mine—It's clean. But don't cry over a trifle like that. It is sure to be somewhere about the place."
Before Anne could dry the flooded eyes and hold the bit of white linen at Eleanor's nose, the girl broke into a merry laugh—so close were tears and laughter in Eleanor's makeup.
"Oh, oh—Anne! I didn't mean that that was what made me cry! But I am so disgusted with myself—that is why I am weeping. If some one would only whip me soundly, I would feel so much better!"
"Oh, I see! you're crying because you are so selfish, eh?"
Eleanor looked up astonished. "Selfish—no, I want to be thrashed, you know."