e distress at his meagre store of hazel nuts.

In his discontent he had already lagged behind his companions. The
other children had set their faces homeward; Sheila walked just ahead
of him, her arm around the waist of Charlotte Davis, a girl of her own
age whom she had taken, with solemn vows, for her dearest friend. He
might call the two girls, he thought, and together they could soon have
a fine harvest, but his inclination rejected Charlotte almost as
quickly as the idea occurred to him. For Charlotte, with her pert
little freckled nose and her shrewd blue eyes, was not a comrade to
Ted's taste. She had never shown him a proper reverence, and he was at
the stage when a boy desires feminine tribute even while he affects to
scorn it.

Charlotte had never understood him. Or was it what he did not
suspect--that she had always understood him too well? At any rate she
had a disconcerting way of gazing at him, her head cocked impudently on
one side, her eyes half speculative, half amused. And her sharp,
teasing tongue was even more disconcerting than her naughty, quizzical
stare. He could imagine, from past experience at her hands, what would
happen now if he included her in his plan.

"What do you want of more nuts?" she would ask, with the inquiring
innocence that he had learned to distrust. "Haven't you got all you
can eat?"

"Yes, but--" he would begin to explain.

And she would interrupt him in the middle of his sentence with:

"Oh, I see! You just want to do more than anybody else, don't you?
Theodore Kent always does more than anybody else! Don't he, Sheila?"
And this with a great show of admiration. Yet even to Sheila, whose
loyal mind conceived with difficulty of any disrespect to him, the
mockery of the apparent admiration would be obvious.

Yes, that was what would happen if he invited Charlotte to stay, and he
felt himself flush at the fancied conversation. But he would ask
Sheila. She really admired him! She appreciated him! If she was
sometimes queer, she was a nice little thing in spite of that.

"Sheila!" he called.

She paused and looked back at him.

"Come here a minute," he urged. "I want to tell you something." And
when she would have drawn Charlotte with her, he added: "It's a secret."

At which transparent hint, Charlotte flung off Sheila's arm and marched
on, singing maliciously:

"Ted has got a secret--secret--secret!
Like a little gir-rul--gir-rul--gir-rul!"