“No plot. You’ll be terribly late now. It was sweet of you to come, Wally, and I’m obliged for the party,” she said, kissing him, and dismounting.
“Isabelle, have you murdered anybody?” he asked, gravely.
“Not yet,” she replied, equally gravely. Then with a wave and a shouted good-bye she ran up the hill, and disappeared into the underbrush.
“Well, I’m damned!” grinned her father; and he turned back on his way to Boston.
Isabelle ran through the woods singing, whistling, praying. “Good Lord, I thank thee,” she said, repeatedly. “You can rely on me not to lie again.” Flushed and relieved from doom, happy as a cricket, she appeared at the school. She was greeted with howls of rage from the girls.
“Isabelle, you pig! To carry him off without letting us see him.”
“How did he look? Is he handsomer than ever?” they chorused.
But Isabelle escaped their catechism. She had been saved once, and she dared not tamper with fate again. At every thought of Wally, speeding back to Boston, she drew a deep sigh of relief.
As they were all seated at supper Mr. Benjamin asked: