Kate followed her. Again they reached the two portraits on the floor; there was a groan on one side, and what was meant for a sigh on the other. Kate was really frightened, and rushed off shrieking.
“Stop, stop, Kate, my dear, there is nothing to be alarmed about,” said Miss Apsley, in a calm voice. “Come back and see.”
As she spoke she caught hold of the nose of one of the portraits, which squeaked out “Oh, oh, oh!” Kate’s fancy was tickled, and she burst into a fit of laughter; her admiration, also, was much excited for her new governess. Digby came forth from behind the other portrait; Julian, whose nose had been caught literally in his own trap, drew it back as he did his tongue, which he had protruded as far as he could, and also came out looking very sheepish, without a word to say for himself.
Digby, however, in a manly way, at once said—“I beg pardon, Miss Apsley, I thought that we were going to play you a good trick, which would have frightened you very much; but I am glad it did not, and I am sure we are very sorry, and I hope you will forgive us.”
Miss Apsley’s calmness had won Digby’s admiration even in a greater degree than it had Kate’s.
“Yes, indeed I will,” she replied, pleased at his frankness. “It was silly and wrong in you, and the consequences might, in some instances, have been serious. I am bound to tell you this that I may warn you against playing such tricks in future; but as far as I am individually concerned I most heartily forgive you, and will entirely overlook the matter.”
Julian could not understand these sentiments, and thought Digby a very silly fellow to make what he called an unnecessary apology. They all went downstairs together, and then Kate took the governess to her room, and confessed that she had herself concocted the scheme which had so signally failed, and told her, indeed, all I have already described about the matter. With eager haste she undid, too, the apple-pie bed which Digby and Julian had made, and assuring her how different a person she was to what she expected, promised that she would never again attempt to play her another trick, and that she would be answerable that Digby would not either.
“Why did you come out and show yourself, Digby?” said Julian, when they were alone together. “I don’t understand your way of doing things; if you had groaned, as it was arranged, when that Miss Apsley and Kate first appeared, we should have put her to flight, and I should not have had my nose pulled—she knows how to pinch hard let me tell you.”
Digby confessed that she really was so nice a person that he did not like to frighten her, and that had he not undertaken to groan, he could not have brought himself to do so at all.
Julian only sneered at this, and said no more on the subject.