No questions were asked about their going into water. This was fortunate, for it probably saved them from the additional guilt of falsehood. They experienced no punishment for their disobedience, except the consciousness that they had committed a wrong act. To some boys, that alone would have been no slight punishment; but I fear this was not the case with Oscar and Jerry.
CHAPTER XVII.
CLINTON.
"Come, Jerry, let's go over to Clinton's this forenoon," said Oscar, the morning after their excursion to the hermit's hut.
"Agreed," replied Jerry, "we 'll start right away as soon as I can find my cap. Let me see—-where did I leave it, I wonder?"
"Jerry," said Mrs. Preston, who overheard this conversation, "bring me in an armfull of wood before you go."
"I 'll get the wood while you 're looking for your cap," said Oscar, and he started for the wood-house.
Oscar almost repented of his offer when he discover ed that there was no wood split. However, he took the axe and split a few logs, and carried them into the kitchen. Jerry had not yet found his cap, though he had searched all over the house for it. He began to suspect some one had played a trick upon him by hiding his cap, and when Emily laughed at his impatience, he concluded she was the guilty one. In vain she protested that she had not seen the missing cap, and did not know where it was. He searched every part of the girls' chamber, and then, in his vexation, he pulled Emily's bonnet from off her head, and tossed it out of the window into an apple-tree, in the branches of which it lodged.
It was now Emily's turn to fly into a pet, and she availed herself of the opportunity. Running to her mother, she reported what Jerry had done, setting off his foolish conduct in the worst possible light. Jerry soon made his appearance in the kitchen, and retorted upon his sister by charging her with having hid his cap. Mrs. Preston tried to settle the difficulty by directing Jerry to get Emily's bonnet out of the tree, and ordering Emily to tell Jerry where his cap was, if she knew; but Emily protested she knew nothing about the cap, and her brother did not seem inclined to obey his portion of the decree, while his sister failed to comply with hers. The quarrel was thus becoming more and more complicated, when Oscar suddenly entered the room with the lost cap in his hand.