"Why do you suppose she didn't tell?" said Molly thoughtfully. "She might have known that Aunt Ada wouldn't punish her or even scold. She would only have said: 'I'd rather you'd always tell me, Mary, before you undertake such trips again.'" Again Molly imitated the person she quoted. "It doesn't seem to me she could be scared of Aunt Ada when she's always so gentle and kind."
"Well, I don't care whether she was scared or not, she wasn't honest, and I think anyhow it was very queer for her to sneak off with a boy she didn't know."
"But I know him; I used to play with him when I was only four years old," said Molly. "He is a very nice boy. Aunt Ada says that he has been very well raised and that any mother could be proud of him. He is real bright, too: why, he can manage a sail boat as well as a man, and he's always so ready and willing to do anything he can for any of us. He is very different from some of the others who just can't bear the summer people."
"Never mind about him; I suppose he is all right; it is Mary I am bothered over."
"Well, the only thing we can do is to wait and see if she will tell of her own accord; maybe she hasn't had a good chance yet to see Aunt Ada alone; we are giving her the chance now, so we will wait and see what happens."
This Polly agreed was best, but they returned to the house to turn a cold shoulder to Mary, and to ignore her in every way they could without being directly rude. So directly opposite was this course of conduct from that of the morning, when her cousins had been all smiles and sweetness, that Mary's fears again arose and she was so miserable that at bedtime when Molly went in to her English cousin's room to get a bottle of cold cream with which to anoint her sunburned face, she heard a soft little sob from Mary's bed.
Immediately her sympathies were aroused. Mary was far from home and mother. What if she had done wrong? She was alone among comparative strangers and who knew the exact truth of yesterday's proceedings? She crept softly to Mary's bedside. Her cousin's face was buried in the pillow, and she was shaking with sobs. Molly leaned over her. "Are you sick, Mary?" she whispered, "Do you want me to call Aunt Ada?"
"Is anything the matter? Please tell me. I'll get into bed with you." And suiting the action to the word she slipped in beside Mary, putting a sympathetic arm around her. "What is it?" she repeated.