Marie's father chuckled. He was not a particularly refined man, and the daintiness and shyness of his little daughter had rather embarrassed him. He was pleased to think that under Christopher's guiding hand she was what he chose to call "improving."
"Do her good!" he said bluntly. "Where's the harm? They're only children."
But the climax came rather violently when one afternoon Marie fell out of the loft into the yard below, and broke her arm.
One of the grooms went running to the rescue and picked her up, a forlorn little heap with a face as white as her frock.
"I fell out myself!" she said with quivering lips. "I fell out all my own self."
Young Christopher, who had clambered down the ladder from the loft, broke in violently:
"She didn't! It was my fault! She made me wild, and I pushed her. I didn't think she'd be so silly as to fall, though," he added, with an angry look at her. "And don't you trouble to tell lies about me."
The groom said afterwards that she had not shed a tear till then, but at the angry words she broke down suddenly into bitter sobbing.
She did not mind her broken arm, but she minded having offended Christopher. It was the greatest trouble she had ever known when— as a consequence of the accident—Christopher was sent away to a boarding school.
Hereafter she only saw him by fits and starts during the holidays, and then he seemed somehow quite different.