And this time the pinafore went up in earnest, and Tiza began to cry piteously.
“Don’t cry, Tiza,” said Milly, her own little cheeks getting wet, too. “I’ll beg him not. Can’t you make up anyway? Mother says we must always make up if we can when we’ve done any harm. I wish I had anything to give you to make up.”
Tiza suddenly dried her eyes and looked at Milly, with a bright expression which was very puzzling.
“You come with me,” she said suddenly, swinging herself down from the tree. “Come here by the hedge, don’t let mother see us.”
So they ran along the far side of the hedge till they got into the farmyard, and then Tiza led Milly past the hen-house, up to the corner where the hayricks were. In and out of the hayricks they went, till in the very farthest corner of all, where hardly anybody ever came, and which nobody could see into from the yard, Tiza suddenly knelt down and put her hand under the hay at the bottom of the rick.
“You come,” she whispered eagerly to Milly, pulling her by the skirt, “you come and look here.”
Milly stooped down, and there in a soft little place, just between the hayrick and the ground, what do you think she saw? Three large brownish eggs lying in a sort of rough nest in the hay, and looking so round and fresh and tempting, that Milly gave a little cry of delight.
“Oh, Tiza, how be—utiful! How did they get there?”
“It’s old Sally, our white hen you know, laid them. I found them just after dinner. Mother doesn’t know nothing about them. I never told Becky, nor nobody. Aren’t they beauties?”
And Tiza took one up lovingly in her rough, little brown hands, and laid it against her cheek, to feel how soft and satiny it was.