Anne smiled knowingly.  “That I am,” she agreed.

“How come?” Milly inquired.

Anne hesitated, then she poured out the whole story.  ’She wanted so much to go back to Miss Drayton.  And didn’t Milly think she was ’most bad enough now?’

Milly threw back her head and laughed till she cried.

“Oh, you Anne! you Anne!” she exclaimed.  At last she got breath enough to explain that Emma had only said that because she was provoked.  It was not true.  Anne would not be sent away.  Indeed, there was nowhere to send her.  Miss Farlow took charge of her and would keep her because there was no one else to care for her.  She would stay there till she was large enough to go out and work for herself, as Milly did.

Anne was much disappointed.  She had set her heart on going back to Miss Drayton.  Still it was disagreeable to be naughty and in disgrace all the time.  Louise used to say, too, that no one loved naughty girls, and Anne loved to be loved.  She didn’t care to be large if she had to make dresses like Milly, when she went away from the ‘Home.’  She did hate to sew!  She cried a little while, then she washed her face, brushed her hair, learned the hymn set her as an afternoon task, and went downstairs to tea, a meek, well-behaved girl again.

CHAPTER XV

The weeks went by, one as like another as the blue-clad children.  A September Saturday afternoon found Anne, with Honey-Sweet clasped in her arms, in a secluded corner near the boundary hedge.  She had told Honey-Sweet all the happenings of the week—­that she was head in reading, that she would have cut Lucy down in spelling-class if the girl next above her had not spelt ‘scissors’ on her fingers—­that Miss ’Liza had not found a wrinkle in her bed-clothes all the week.  She cuddled and kissed Honey-Sweet to her heart’s content, crooning over and over her old lullaby:—­

          “Honey, honey!  Sweet, sweet, sweet! 
          Honey, honey!  Honey-Sweet!”

Then she wandered into her world of ‘make believe.’  Once upon a time, there was a fair, forlorn princess on a milk-white steed.  She was lost in a forest.  It was, though the princess did not know it, an enchanted forest.  And there was a cruel giant who had seized twenty-seven fair, forlorn princesses whom he had made his serving-maids.  They could be freed only by a magic ring worn by a gallant knight who did not know about their danger.  Anne stopped in the middle of her story, keeping mouse-still so as not to frighten a robin beside the hedge.

She gave a start when a voice near her piped out, “Tell on, little girl, tell on; I like that story.”

Anne looked around.  No one was in sight.

“If you don’t tell on, I’ll cry.  Then mother will punish you,” said the shrill little voice.