"Well," said Scotty handsomely, "mebby I'll be coming."
"I'm going to ask Kirsty if I can't go to school with you some day!" she cried audaciously.
Scotty looked alarmed. In reality he was most eager to return and resume housekeeping in the fence-corner, but to have this stranger go to school with him would never do. The boys would laugh at him, and already he had sufficient trials with Betty Lauchie since Peter stopped going to school.
"Oh, it's too far!" he cried hastily, "an' there will be an awful cross master there!"
"I don't care, you wouldn't let him touch me, would you?"
"If you don't ask Kirsty, I'll come over all next Saturday, an' mebby she'll be letting you come to my place; it's nicer than school."
So thus comforted, Isabel climbed the stump and swung her sunbonnet as long as the slanting sunlight showed the little figure running down the fast darkening forest-pathway; and just before the shadows swallowed him up, he turned and waved his cap in farewell.