I could scarcely help smiling at her funny little air.
'It wasn't anything very much, after all,' said Master Francis. 'It was only that uncle said——,' and here his voice quivered and he stopped short.
'Tell it from the beginning,' said Miss Lally in her motherly way, 'and then when you get up to the bad part it won't seem so hard to tell.'
It was a relief to him to have her sympathy, I could see, and I think he cared a little for mine too.
'Well,' he began, 'it's all about that Latin grammar—no, not the lesson,' seeing that Miss Lally was going to interrupt him, 'but the book. Uncle's fat old Latin grammar, you know, Lally. We didn't use it last Friday, it wasn't the day, and we hadn't needed to look at it ourselves since last Wednesday—that was the ink-spilling day. So it was not found out till to-day; and—and uncle was—so—so vexed when he saw how spoilt it was, and the worst of it was I began something about it having been Bess, and that she hadn't told me, and that made uncle much worse——.' Here Master Francis stopped, he seemed on the point of crying again, and he was a boy to feel very ashamed of tears, as I have said.
'I don't think Miss Bess could have known the book had got inked,' I said. 'And I scarce see how it happened, unless the ink got spilt on the table, and it may have been lying open—I've seen Miss Bess fling her books down open on their faces, so to speak, many a time,—and it may have dried in and been shut up when all the books were cleared away, and no one noticed.'
'Yes,' said Master Francis eagerly, 'that's how it must have been. I never meant that Bess had done it and hidden it. I said it in a hurry because I was so sorry for uncle to think I hadn't taken care of his book, and I was very sorry about the book too. But I made it far worse. Uncle said it was mean of me to try to put my carelessness upon another, a younger child, and a girl; O Lally! you never heard him speak like that; it was dreadful.'
'Was it worse than that time when big Jem put the blame on little Pat about the dogs not being fed?' asked Miss Lally very solemnly.
Master Francis flushed all over.
'You needn't have said that, Lally,' he said turning away. 'I'm not so bad as that, any way.'