She ran down the garden path to the cherry tree, and as, in the various times they had been together, Becky and Tiza had taught her a good deal of climbing, she too clambered up into the wet branches, and was soon sitting close by Tiza, who had turned her cotton pinafore over her head and wouldn’t look at Milly.

“Tiza,” said Milly softly, putting her hand on Tiza’s lap, “do you feel very bad?”

No answer.

“We came to take you down to have tea with us,” said Milly, “do you think your mother will let you come?”

“Naw,” said Tiza shortly, without moving from behind her pinafore.

It certainly wasn’t very easy talking to Tiza.  Milly thought she’d better try something else.

“Tiza,” she began timidly, “do your father and mother tell you stories when it rains?”

“Naw,” said Tiza, in a very astonished voice, throwing down her pinafore to stare at Milly.

“Then what do you do, Tiza, when it rains?”

“Nothing,” said Tiza.  “We has our dinners and tea, and sometimes Becky minds the baby and sometimes I do, and father mostly goes to sleep.”

“Tiza,” said Milly hurriedly, “did you mean pussy to jump into the saucepan?”

Up went Tiza’s pinafore again, and Milly was in dismay because she thought she had made Tiza cry; but to her great surprise Tiza suddenly burst into such fits of laughter, that she nearly tumbled off the cherry tree.  “Oh, she did jump so, and the mug made such a rattling!  And when she comed out there was just a little bit of carrot sticking to her nose, and her tail was all over cabbage leaf.  Oh, she did look funny!”

Milly couldn’t help laughing too, till she remembered all that Mrs. Backhouse had been saying.

“Oh, but, Tiza, Mrs. Backhouse says your father won’t have anything for his supper.  Aren’t you sorry you spoilt his supper?”

“Yis,” said Tiza, quickly.  “I know father’ll beat me, he said he would next time I vexed mother.”

And this time the pinafore went up in earnest, and Tiza began to cry piteously.

“Don’t cry, Tiza,” said Milly, her own little cheeks getting wet, too.  “I’ll beg him not.  Can’t you make up anyway?  Mother says we must always make up if we can when we’ve done any harm.  I wish I had anything to give you to make up.”

Tiza suddenly dried her eyes and looked at Milly, with a bright expression which was very puzzling.

“You come with me,” she said suddenly, swinging herself down from the tree.  “Come here by the hedge, don’t let mother see us.”

So they ran along the far side of the hedge till they got into the farmyard, and then Tiza led Milly past the hen-house, up to the corner where the hayricks were.  In and out of the hayricks they went, till in the very farthest corner of all, where hardly anybody ever came, and which nobody could see into from the yard, Tiza suddenly knelt down and put her hand under the hay at the bottom of the rick.