Hetty hesitated, and then said, “Mark.”

“But Mark was out riding with his father.”

“Yes.”

“And you were alone all that time.”

“Yes.”

“And yet there is something behind that you will not tell.  Hetty, I always thought you frank till now.  Why are you making a mystery?”

“I can’t tell you, Miss Davis; I was not doing any harm.”

“How am I to believe that?” said Miss Davis.

“Oh, my head!” moaned Hetty, as the pain seemed crushing it.  She thought that if she were to die for it she would not tell that Mark had treated her badly.

Miss Davis went away hurt and displeased, and Hetty was very much alone for several days, being too ill to leave her room, and too deeply in disgrace to be petted by anyone.  She was very unhappy, and lay wondering how it was that with a strong desire to do right she seemed always going wrong.  If she had dropped the string, gone away to see Mrs. Kane as she had been longing to do, and returned in good time to the school-room to tea, Mark would perhaps have been better pleased with her than he actually was.  He had not guessed that she had meant to please him, to make up for telling Miss Davis that they two had played her a trick.  He did not ask about her now she was ill, or notice that she was keeping silence and allowing herself to be misunderstood in order that he might not be blamed.  If all were told he could not be much blamed, it was true, for what was a mere piece of forgetfulness.  But that carelessness of his was a fault of which his father was very impatient, and which always brought on him a severe reprimand.

“And I will not tell this time,” said Hetty to herself, as her eyes feverishly danced after the spots on the wall-paper.  “When I told before, it was to save Miss Davis from suffering, this time there is nobody to suffer but myself.”

In the meantime Mark was spending a few days with a school-fellow at a distance of some miles, and had gone away without hearing about Hetty’s illness.  As soon as he returned home he missed her, and learned that she was shut up in her room.

He immediately went to inquire for her, and met Miss Davis on the stairs.

“I’m sure I don’t wonder she got a cold,” he said, “but I never meant her to do it.”

“To do what?” asked Miss Davis.

“Why, did she not tell you?”

“I have not been able to get her to tell me what she was about that day for two hours alone in the grounds.  She has not behaved well, I am sorry to say; she has been in disgrace as well as ill.”

“Then it was a jolly shame!” burst forth Mark.  “I left her to hold a string for me, and I forgot all about her, and went away to ride.  And she stood holding the string for two hours in the cold.  And I called her a duffer for not running away and letting all my pegs go crooked in the ground.  Oh, I say, Miss Davis, it makes a fellow feel awfully ashamed of himself.”