nner. "Will you do it for me if you won't do it for Miss Peckham?"

Bengal could not hold out against the coaxing of her adored one, but she
still hesitated, bargaining her promise for a reward. "If you'll let me
wear your ring for the rest of the summer, and come and kiss me
goodnight every night after I'm in bed--"

"All right," Agony agreed hastily, with a sigh of resignation for this
departure from her fixed principles regarding the lending of jewelry and
about promiscuous demonstrations of affection, but peace in camp was
worth the price.

Bengal claimed the ring at once, and then, after pawing Agony over like
a bear cub, said a little shamefacedly, "I wish I were as good as you
are. You're so honorable. How do you get such a 'nice sense of honor' as
you have? I think I'd like to have one."

"Such a nice sense of honor as you have!" Agony jerked up as though she
had been jabbed with a red hot needle. "Such a nice sense of honor as
you have!" The words lingered in her ears like a mocking echo. The smile
faded from her lips; her arm stiffened and dropped from Bengal's
shoulder. The frank admiration in the younger girl's eyes cut her to the
quick. With a haggard look she turned away from Bengal and wandered away
to the other part of the island, away from the girls. Just now she could
not bear to hear their gay, carefree voices. What would she not give,
she thought to herself, to have nothing on her mind. She even envied
rabbit-brained little Carmen Chadwick, who, if she had nothing in her
head, had nothing on her conscience either.

"Who am I to talk of a 'nice sense of honor' to Bengal Virden?" she
thought miserably. "I'm a whole lot worse than she. She's only a
mischievous child, and doesn't know any better, but I do. I'm no better
than Jane Pratt, either, even though I told Mrs. Grayson about her going
out at night with boys from Camp Altamont." This matter of Jane Pratt
had tormented Agony without ceasing. True to her contemptuous attitude
toward Agony's plea that she break bonds no more, she had refused to
tell Mrs. Grayson about her nocturnal canoe rides and thus had forced
Agony to make good her threat and tell Mrs. Grayson herself. She had
hoped and prayed that Jane would take the better course and confess her
own wrong doing, but Jane did nothing of the kind, and there was only
one course open to Agony. It was the rule of the camp that anyone seeing
another breaking the rules must first give the offender