Page:Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903).djvu/97

Rh society of her mates and sought a safe solitude in the woods, returning after a time with a jocund smile on her smug face.

After one of these private luncheons Rebecca had been tempted beyond her strength, and when Minnie took her seat among them asked, "Is your headache better, Minnie? Let me wipe off that strawberry jam over your mouth."

There was no jam there as a matter of fact, but the guilty Minnie's handkerchief went to her crimson face in a flash.

Rebecca confessed to Emma Jane that same afternoon that she felt ashamed of her prank. "I do hate her ways," she exclaimed, "but I 'm sorry I let her know we 'spected her; and so to make up, I gave her that little piece of broken coral I keep in my bead purse; you know the one?"

"It don't hardly seem as if she deserved that, and her so greedy," remarked Emma Jane.

"I know it, but it makes me feel better," said Rebecca largely; "and then I 've had it two years, and it 's broken so it would n't ever be any real good, beautiful as it is to look at."

The coral had partly served its purpose as a reconciling bond, when one afternoon Rebecca, who had stayed after school for her grammar lesson as usual, was returning home by way of the short cut. Far ahead, beyond the bars, she espied the Simpson children just entering the woodsy