shake the child's faith in her friend,
but only hoped her innocent instinct might prove sure, and loved her all
the better for it. Nat often said, after it was over, that he couldn't
have stood it, if it had not been for Daisy. When the others shunned
him, she clung to him closer than ever, and turned her back on the rest.
She did not sit on the stairs now when he solaced himself with the old
fiddle, but went in and sat beside him, listening with a face so full of
confidence and affection, that Nat forgot disgrace for a time, and
was happy. She asked him to help her with her lessons, she cooked him
marvelous messes in her kitchen, which he ate manfully, no matter what
they were, for gratitude gave a sweet flavor to the most distasteful.
She proposed impossible games of cricket and ball, when she found that
he shrank from joining the other boys. She put little nosegays from her
garden on his desk, and tried in every way to show that she was not a
fair-weather friend, but faithful through evil as well as good repute.
Nan soon followed her example, in kindness at least; curbed her sharp
tongue, and kept her scornful little nose from any demonstration of
doubt or dislike, which was good of Madame Giddy-gaddy, for she firmly
believed that Nat took the money.

Most of the boys let him severely alone, but Dan, though he said he
despised him for being a coward, watched over him with a grim sort of
protection, and promptly cuffed any lad who dared to molest his mate or
make him afraid. His idea of friendship was as high as Daisy's, and, in
his own rough way, he lived up to it as loyally.

Sitting by the brook one afternoon, absorbed in the study of the
domestic habits of water-spiders, he overheard a bit of conversation on
the other side of the wall. Ned, who was intensely inquisitive, had been
on tenterhooks to know certainly who was the culprit; for of late one
or two of the boys had begun to think that they were wrong, Nat was so
steadfast in his denials, and so meek in his endurance of their neglect.
This doubt had teased Ned past bearing, and he had several times
privately beset Nat with questions, regardless of Mr. Bhaer's express
command. Finding Nat reading alone on the shady side of the wall, Ned
could not resist stopping for a nibble at the forbidden subject. He had
worried Nat for some ten minutes before Dan arrived, and the first words
the spider-student heard were these, in Nat's patient, pleading voice,

"Don't,