stay
there--but you said I must stay. Don't you remember that?"

Dolly, as a matter of fact, had quite forgotten it. But she remembered
well enough, now that Bessie had reminded her of it. And, though she had
a hot temper, and was fond of mischief, Dolly was not sly. She admitted
it at once.

"I do remember it now, Bessie."

"Well, don't you see how absurd it is to say that I took Will away from
you? We were both there together--I couldn't tell when we saw him coming
that he was going to talk to me, could I? And listen, Dolly--he asked me
to go home with him in his buggy, and I said I wouldn't."

With some girls that would have made the chance of mending things very
remote. But Dolly, although her jealousy had been so quickly aroused,
was not the sort to get still angrier at this fresh proof that she had
been mistaken in thinking that Will Burns had liked her better than
Bessie.

"Why, Bessie--why did you do that?"

Bessie laughed.

"We're not going to be here very much longer, are we, Dolly?" she said.
"Well--if we're not going to be here, we're not going to see much of
Will Burns. You're not the only girl who--was--who thought that he ought
to be paying more attention to her than to me. There was a pretty girl
from Jericho, and he's known her a long time. Walter told me about them.

"And I could see that she wanted him to drive her home, so I asked him
why he didn't do it. And he got very much confused, but he went over to
her, finally, and she looked just as happy as she could be when he
handed her up into his buggy, and they all went off along the road
together, Will and she and two or three other fellows who had driven
over together from Jericho."

Dolly's expression had changed two or three times, very swiftly, as she
listened. Now she sighed, and her hand crept out to find Bessie's.

"Oh, Bessie," she said, softly, "won't you forgive me, dear? I've made a
fool of myself again--I'm always doing that, it seems to me. And every
time I promise myself or you or someone not to do it again. But the
trouble is there are so many different ways of being foolish. I seem to
find new ones all the time, and every one is so different from the
others that I never know about it until it's too late."

"It's never too late to find out one's been in the wrong, Dolly, if one
admits it. There aren't many girls like you, who are ready to say
they've been wrong, no matter how well they know it. I haven't anything
to forgiv