ul thing for me;
and doing it just as quietly and inconsequentially as you did it before;
and all at once I realized how splendid it was and wanted to thank you.

It came over me, too, that I had never thanked you for the other times,
and very likely you never dreamed that you had done anything at all.

You see I was only a little girl, very much frightened, because Chuck
Woodcock had teased me about my curls and said that he was going to catch
me and cut them off, and send me home to my aunt that way, and she would
turn me out of the house. He had been frightening me for several days, so
that I was afraid to go to school alone, and yet I would not tell my aunt
because I was afraid she would take me away from the Public School and
send me to a Private School which I did not want. But that day I had seen
Chuck Woodcock steal in behind the hedge, ahead of the girls. The others
were ahead of me and I was all out of breath--running to catch up because
I was afraid to pass him alone; and just as I got near two of them,--Mary
Wurts and Caroline Meadows, you remember them, don't you?--they gave a
scream and pitched headlong on the sidewalk. They had tripped over a wire
he had stretched from the tree to the hedge. I stopped short and got
behind a tree, and I remember how the tears felt in my throat, but I was
afraid to let them out because Chuck would call me a crybaby and I hated
that. And just then you came along behind me and jumped through the hedge
and caught Chuck and gave him an awful whipping. "Licking" I believe we
called it then. I remember how condemned I felt as I ran by the hedge and
knew in my heart that I was glad you were hurting him because he had been
so cruel to me. He used to pull my curls whenever he sat behind me in
recitation.

I remember you came in to school late with your hair all mussed up
beautifully, and a big tear in your coat, and a streak of mud on your
face. I was so worried lest the teacher would find out you had been
fighting and make you stay after school. Because you see I knew in my
heart that you had been winning a battle for me, and if anybody had to
stay after school I wished it could be me because of what you had done
for me. But you came in laughing as you always did, and looking as if
nothing in the world unusual had happened, and when you passed my desk
you threw before me the loveliest pink rose bud I ever saw. That was the
second thing you did for me.

Perhaps you won't understa