“My dear, I wonder if we have both been absurd and I have been unfair?” she questioned. “It is only because I have cared so much——”
Bettina sat down on the rug and, unlike her usual reserved self, put her head down on Mrs. Burton’s knees, covering her face.
“Please don’t make me go home; I don’t want to,” she whispered, “but in any case Peggy shan’t go with me.”
Then, before any one else could speak, Vera, without asking permission, walked inside the tent.
“I am so sorry to interrupt,” she began, “but Gerry Williams asked me to come and explain something to you. She says she closed the door on you, Bettina, in the Indian house this morning, partly for a joke and perhaps because, in a way she hoped to make Mrs. Burton angry with you.”
Vera spoke in an entirely matter-of-fact fashion, as if there were nothing unusual in her statement. But the others stared at her in surprise.
“I thought it was Gerry, but I was not sure enough to say so,” Bettina murmured, “and I am afraid I don’t understand now.”
“But why should she?” Mrs. Burton questioned.
Peggy, as usual, came directly to the point.
“It wasn’t so extraordinary; Gerry is built that way. I guessed her measure from the beginning. But the thing that puzzles me, Vera, is not Gerry’s mischievousness, but how you induced her to confess.”