“I should say I did,” Rosie answered Arthur’s question.  “Somebody went and tattled to my mother.  Of course, I was wet through to the skin and that gave the whole thing away, anyway.  I got the worst scolding and mother sent me to bed without my supper.  But I climbed out the window and went over to see Maida.  I don’t mind!  I hate school and as long as I live I shall never go except when I want to—­never, never, never!  I guess I’m not going to be shut up studying when I’d rather be out in the open air.  Wouldn’t you hook jack if you wanted to, Maida?”

Maida did not reply for an instant.  She hated to have Rosie ask this question, point-blank for she did not want to answer it.  If she said exactly what she thought there might be trouble.  And it seemed to her that she would do almost anything rather than lose Rosie’s friendship.  But Maida had been taught to believe that the truth is the most precious thing in the world.  And so she told the truth after a while but it was with a great effort.

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said.

“Oh, that’s all right for you to say,” Rosie said firing up.  “You don’t have to go to school.  You live the easiest life that anybody can—­just sitting in a chair and tending shop all day.  What do you know about it, anyway?”

Maida’s lips quivered.  “It is true I don’t go to school, Rosie,” she said.  “But it isn’t because I don’t want to.  I’d give anything on earth if I could go.  I watch that line of children every morning and afternoon of my life and wish and wish and WISH I was in it.  And when the windows are opened and I hear the singing and reading, it seems as if I just couldn’t stand it.”

“Oh, well,” Rosie’s tone was still scornful.  “I don’t believe, even if you did go to school, that you’d ever do anything bad.  You’d never be anything but a fraid-cat and teacher’s pet.”

“I guess I’d be so glad to be there, I’d do anything the teacher asked,” Maida said dejectedly.  “I do a lot of things that bother Granny but I guess I never have been a very naughty girl.  You can’t be very naughty with your leg all crooked under you.”  Maida’s voice had grown bitter.  The children looked at her in amazement.  “But what’s the use of talking to you two,” she went on.  “You could never understand.  I guess Dicky knows what I mean, though.”

To their great surprise, Maida put her head down on the table and cried.

For a moment the room was perfectly silent.  The fire snapped and Dicky went over to look at it.  He stood with his back turned to the other children but a suspicious snuffle came from his direction.  Arthur Duncan walked to the window and stood looking out.  Rosie sat still, her eyes downcast, her little white teeth biting her red lips.  Then suddenly she jumped to her feet, ran like a whirlwind to Maida’s side.  She put her arms about the bowed figure.

“Oh, do excuse me, Maida,” she begged.  “I know I’m the worst girl in the world.  Everybody says so and I guess it’s true.  But I do love you and I wouldn’t have hurt your feelings for anything.  I don’t believe you’d be a fraid-cat or teacher’s pet—­I truly don’t.  Please excuse me.”