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28 “You must,” said he, and shut his mouth tight, “and you will, if you care enough for me.”

“Then I will,” she said, very soft. “I promise you, Walter.”

“And I promise the same to you,” he said, “and do you, my dear child, promise the same?”

It was like the catechism. Connie would have liked it.

“Yes, but can’t I tell Connie?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said, “you may explain to Miss Connie that I have been at work for some time on a portrait—better, I hope, than the one she presented. You are both old enough to know that you did very wrong in that matter, and that you might have made a great deal of trouble. People have gone to prison for signing other people’s initials. (Which is quite true.) In this case, if I had drawn the picture I should have given it to Miss Peck, so you were not so far out of the way; but you might have made great trouble. Did anyone else know about the picture?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, “Benigna Hewitt.”

“Has she black eyes and straight brown hair?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah, yes. Well, explain it to her, too, and I think that’s all,” he said. “You understand that Miss Peck could easily have you expelled from the school if she chose, but she does not choose. I only tell you this to make you understand the situation. Do you think you do?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and got out. I tell you, I was surprised to find it was the same afternoon outside, so much had happened.

Connie was scared to death, and Ben was, too—more than she pretended. For of course it was forging Ben said it would evermore be a lesson to us, and so it will.

The teachers gave her a mahogany desk and the girls in her classes a chafing-dish. And now I suppose she is sewing on all his buttons.

But Connie never dared to put it on her page of good deeds.