Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/71

 FOR ALWAYS

ter of course because they never had known anything else, and I had been the first to hurt them. I was the first to spoil their confidence in others — and themselves. I couldn't sleep for thinking of it, and finally I got up, and, to punish myself, went out barefooted into the storm and brought them back. They forgave me and soon settled down, but they never were quite the same, for they had learned what pain was and what it meant to be afraid.

" When I went there to-night I was like those puppies, just as green and confident — just as sure of everybody's kindness."

" Oh, I'm so sorry, Katie," he replied in a low tone.

" I don't mean to whine," she went on, " but you see I wasn't expecting it, and, like the puppies, it took me a long time to understand. I thought at first it was my dress

— that I looked — funny, somehow ; but you said it wasn't that, so I thought maybe it was because we were ' in sheep,' but so is Neifkin, and nobody treated them as they did me.

"The upstarts!" savagely. "I'll never forgive my- self for taking you there! "

She protested quickly:

" You're not to blame. How could you know? You meant to do something nice for me, Hughie."

He winced at that. It would have required more courage than he had to have told her at the moment the exact truth.

He held the horses back and stopped suddenly.

" Katie," turning to her, " I'd do anything in the world to make amends for what happened to-night. Isn't there some way — something I can do for you ? Anything at all," he pleaded. " Just tell me — no matter what it is

— you've only to let me know."

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