"Then it was a jolly shame!" burst forth Mark. "I left her to hold a string for me, and I forgot all about her, and went away to ride. And she stood holding the string for two hours in the cold. And I called her a duffer for not running away and letting all my pegs go crooked in the ground. Oh, I say, Miss Davis, it makes a fellow feel awfully ashamed of himself."
"So it ought," said Miss Davis, who now understood the whole thing. "She would not tell for fear of getting you blamed."
"And I called her a tell-tale before," said Mark, "because she told you about the trick. I've been punishing her for weeks about that. Miss Davis, can't I go in and see her and beg her pardon?"
"Certainly," said Miss Davis; "she is sitting at the fire, and her eyes are red with crying. Come in with me and we will try to make her happy again."
"Why, Hetty, you do look miserable!" cried Mark, coming into the room and looking ruefully at her pale cheeks and the black shadows round her eyes. "And to think of you never telling after all I made you suffer!"
"I wanted to show you that I am not a tell-tale, Mark; but oh, I am so glad you have come. I thought you were never going to be friends with me again."
"I was away four days," said Mark; "and of course I thought you knew. But Hetty, you are a jolly queer girl I can tell you, and I can't half understand you. Think of anyone standing two hours to be pierced through and through with cold, rather than drop a fellow's string and run away!"
Hetty looked at him wistfully, recognizing the truth that he never could understand the sort of feeling that led her into making, as he considered, such a fool of herself. Miss Davis gazed at her kindly and pityingly, thinking of how many hard blows she would get in the future, in return for acts like that which had so puzzled Mark. And she resolved that another time she would be slow in blaming any eccentric conduct in Hetty, and would wait till she could get at the motive which inspired it.