“Here, hold the string a moment longer while I put this peg properly into the ground.  Can’t you catch it tight?  Oh, your fingers are stiff.  There, that will do for to-night Now, come home and get warm again.”

They walked up to the house together.  Hetty was too cold, and tired, and hurt to speak again, and Mark was too much annoyed at his own carelessness, and what he called Hetty’s stupidity, to be able to thank her, and offer to make friends with her.  Hetty went up to her own room to take off her things, and when she came down to the school-room she found that the tea was over and she was in disgrace for staying out so long.  Phyllis cast a disapproving glance at her as she entered.  Punctuality was one of Phyllis’s virtues.  Miss Davis rebuked Hetty for staying out alone so late.

“I must tell Mrs. Kane,” she said, “not to keep you so late when you go to see her.”

Then Hetty was obliged to say that she had not been to see Mrs. Kane.

“Where, then, can you have been for two hours all alone?”

“I was all the time in the grounds,” said Hetty.

She had made up her mind that she would not “tell” this time of Mark, and the consciousness that she was in an awkward position made her colour up and look as if guilty of some fault she did not wish to own.  Phyllis looked at her narrowly and glanced at Miss Davis, who had a pained expression on her face, but who said nothing more at the time, being willing to screen Hetty if she could.

“Hetty, I am sure you have got cold,” said Nell after some time; “you are all shivery-shuddery.”

“My head is aching,” said Hetty; “I don’t feel well.”

“I suppose you were sitting all the time reading a story-book,” said Phyllis, “that would give you cold in weather like this.”

“No, I was not reading, at least not long,” said Hetty.

“But were you sitting?”

“No.”

“Walking?”

“No, not much.”

“My dear, you must not cross-question like that,” said Miss Davis.  “Perhaps Hetty will tell me by and by what she was doing.”

A frown gathered on Phyllis’s fair brows and she turned coldly to her lesson book which she was studying for the next day.  She could not bear even so slight a rebuke as this, but she knew how to reserve the expression of her displeasure to a fitting time.  She herself believed that she bore an undeserved reproof with dignity, but some day in the future the governess would be made to suffer some petty annoyance or disappointment in atonement for her misconduct in finding fault with her pattern pupil.  Hetty raised her eyes with a thankful glance at Miss Davis, who saw that they were full of tears.  A sudden warmth kindled in Miss Davis’s heart as she saw that Hetty trusted in her forbearance, and she said presently: 

“I think you had better go to bed now, Hetty.  You look unwell; and bed is the best place for a cold.”