with a promise of
the same melting delicacies, to run up to Aldith's with the other
letter, and Meg breathed freely ago feeling she had skilfully
averted the threatening danger attendant on the evening
meeting.

But surely the notes were fated! Bunty delivered his safely
enough to the housemaid at the MacCarthys', and in answer to
the girl's question "s'posed there was an answer, girls always
'spected one to nothing."

Aldith was confined to her room with a sudden severe cold, and
wrote a note to her friend, telling her how she was too ill to be
allowed out, and had written to Mr. Graham, and Mr. Courtney,
too, postponing the walk for a week.

Now this note, in its pale pink triangular envelope, was
transferred to Bunty's pocket among his marbles and peanuts and
string. And, as might be expected, he fell in with some other
choice spirits on the return journey, and was soon on his knees
by the roadside playing marbles.

He lost ten, exclusive of his best agate, fought a boy who had
unlawfully possessed himself of his most cherished "conny," and
returned home with saddened spirits an hour later, only to find
as he went through the gate that he had lost Aldith's dainty
little note.

Now Meg had promised him eight chocolate walnuts on his return,
and if this same boy had one weakness more pronounced than others,
it was his extreme partiality for this kind of confectionery, and
he had not tasted one for weeks, so no wonder it almost broke his
heart to think they would be forfeited.

"I know she'll be stingy enough to say I haven't earned them, just
'cause I dropped that girl's stupid letter," he said to himself,
miserably, "and I don't suppose there was anything in it but
'Dearest Marguerite, let us always tell each other our secrets';
I heard her say that twice, and of course she writes it, too."
Then temptation came upon him swiftly, suddenly.

By nature Bunty was the most arrant little storyteller ever born,
and it was only Judy's fearless honesty and strongly expressed
scorn for equivocation that had kept him moderately truthful.
But Judy was miles away, and could not possibly wither him up
with her look of utter contempt. He was at the nursery door now,
turning the handle with hesitating hands.

"What a time you've been," said Meg from the table, where she was
mending a boxful of her gloves. "Well, what did she say?"

Just at her elbow was the gay _bonbonniere_ containing the brown,
cream-encrusted w