"Ruby, dear, I feel as if it was more my fault than yours," said Miss Ketchum, gently wiping away the little girl's tears. "Now you may go out to play and I will hear your lesson some time after school, when you feel like coming up to my room to say it, and you shall have your good mark, if you know it, just as if you had recited it in class. I shall not consider that you have done anything wrong this morning, for I can understand that you would not have laughed if you had had time to think about it for a moment. But you will try after this always to be quiet, will you not?"
"Yes 'm," answered Ruby, earnestly, and returning Miss Ketchum's kiss, she wiped her eyes and ran out to play, happier than she had had any idea that she could ever be again.
She thought to herself that she would never smile again in school, even if such a thing should happen as that Miss Ketchum should leave both of her curls off at once. When she went out to play she found that the girls were disposed to make much of her for her trouble of the morning.
"It was too bad for anything, Ruby Harper, that you had to get into trouble all on account of Miss Ketchum's curl," said one of the girls. "I don't wonder you laughed. If you had seen it before you might have been able to help it, but to look up and see her hair looking that way was enough to make any one laugh, whether they meant to or not.
"Miss Ketchum knows now that I did not mean to," Ruby answered. "I truly could not help it, but you see if I am ever in disgrace again."
"Never mind, all the girls knew how it was," answered her friend, comfortingly. "Come and play puss in the corner. I am glad she let you out instead of keeping you in all recess."
Ruby was quite happy again now, and when she had a moment in which to run up and tell Aunt Emma that Miss Ketchum said that she had not really done anything naughty, she felt much better.
But she was sorry that she had laughed, even if she did not intend to, and she wanted to make up to Miss Ketchum for her seeming rudeness; so she made up her mind that that very afternoon she would gather all the caterpillars she could find anywhere, and give them to Miss Ketchum, to show her how sorry she was, and how happy she would like to make her.
That afternoon, as soon as she had finished practising, she took an empty cardboard box, and went down to the end of the garden. She was quite sure that in the vegetable garden she would find ever so many caterpillars, and there they were,—great brown ones, crawling lazily about in the sun, smaller green ones, that travelled about more actively, and upon the tomato-plants Ruby found some that she was quite sure Miss Ketchum would like, because they were so remarkably large and ugly.
She was a very happy little girl as she filled her box, feeling almost as delighted as if she was finding something for herself with every caterpillar that she captured and put into her box.