“I didn’t want to,” confessed Betty, “but there wasn’t anything else to do.  It was a sacred promise, you know, and I had to keep it—­to the utmost.”

They jogged along in silence side by side, a moment longer.  Then as the bonfire at the old mill flared into sight, Keith looked down at the tired little figure on the pony beside him.

“Betty,” he said, with a gleam of admiration in his eyes, “you’re a brick!”

CHAPTER X.

“FOUND OUT.”

“What makes everybody so snarly this morning?” asked Joyce, looking around on the circle of moody faces.  The four girls had been lounging in hammocks and chairs under the trees for several hours, and in all that time scarcely a civil word had been spoken.

“There isn’t any reason why we should be cross,” Joyce went on.  “It’s a glorious day, we’ve had a delicious breakfast and a good ride, and there is the tissue-paper party at Sally Fairfax’s to-night to look forward to.  But in spite of it all I feel so mean and cross that I want to scratch somebody.”

Betty looked up from her book and laughed.  “I don’t feel snarly, but I’ve been wondering ever since breakfast what had happened to make you all out of sorts.  Lloyd looks as if she had been eating sour pickles, and Eugenia has snapped at everybody who has spoken to her this morning.”

“That’s a story!” exclaimed Eugenia, tartly, with such a frown that Lloyd began singing in a tantalising tone, “Crosspatch, draw the latch, sit by the fire and spin.”

“Oh, hush up!” exclaimed Eugenia, crossly.

“Why, Lloyd,” said Mrs. Sherman, coming up just then in time to hear Lloyd’s song and Eugenia’s answer, “you are surely not teasing one of your guests!  I am surprised!”

To every one’s astonishment, Lloyd flopped over in the hammock, and, covering her face with her arm, began to cry.

“What is the matter, little daughter?” asked Mrs. Sherman, in alarm, sitting down in the hammock beside her and stroking the short soft hair soothingly.  She had never known Lloyd to be so sensitive to a slight reproof.

“Mother didn’t mean to scold her little girl.  I was only surprised to hear you saying anything unpleasant to a guest of yours.”

“You-you’d have said it, too!” sobbed the Little Colonel, “if Eu-Eugenia had been so mean to you all mawnin’!  She’s been t-talkin so hateful and cross—­”

“I have not!” cried Eugenia.  “You began it, and you have tried to pick a quarrel ever since we came out here, and Joyce has kept nagging at me, too.  You’ve both made me feel so miserable and unhappy that I wish I’d never set eyes on you and your horrid old Kentucky!”

Here, to Mrs. Sherman’s still greater surprise, Eugenia fumbled for her handkerchief and began mopping up the tears that were streaming down her face.

“Really, girls, I am distressed!” exclaimed Mrs. Sherman.  “Is there anything serious the matter that you have been quarrelling about, or are you only ill and nervous?”