"I ran home, and left her there sitting on the step."
"Did you ever see her again?"
She hesitated visibly; the color came and went in the thin sensitive face. She dropped her voice:
"She came to the spring next day. Mr. Tayloe sent me for a bucket of water—after school, you know. He said you did help me with that awful sum, and made me stay in and do it all over again. I never felt so angry before. I wished that I could kill him. And Mrs. Fogg began palavering, and I tried to get away from her. She would help me up the hill with the bucket, and I wasn't decently polite to her. When I got into the school-house, there was my slate on the bench where Mr. Tayloe had put it while I was gone, and he had rubbed out the sum I had done. Then—I think it was like being possessed of a devil, for my head went round and round, and I got hot all over. For there he sat, with that horrid smile on his face, as if he were making fun of me, when I had done my very best, and been disgraced for nothing at all. I jumped up and threw the bucket on him, and ran away as fast as I could. That's all. Oh, father, please don't let us talk any more about that horrible day!" Her voice arose into a piteous cry.
"No, lassie, never again!"
He gathered her into his arms, and held her there as he had in that wonderful ride through the woods the night he found her asleep in the school-house, and she sobbed herself calm upon the heart where there was always love for his children, and where she knew at last the warmest place was for her.
When he appeared belowstairs he found his sister in the chamber alone, but for the sleeping baby whom she had offered to look after, while the other children in a gale of spirits superintended and hindered the frying of the doughnuts.
"Does that amuse you, David?" asked Mis. McLaren, smiling at the pains he took to tear a scrap of white paper into bits, all exactly the same size, and to throw them one by one into the fire. Each was seized by the hot draught and whirled up the chimney.
"It pleases me—mightily!" he rejoined, his face as sunny as hers. "I am disposing of the last objection I had to putting my bit lassie into your hands. I can trust her the world over now."
He sat down by his sister, stretching his long legs in front of him, and locking his hands at the back of his head, with the air of one who has shaken off a burden.