ad fixed them."

"How do you know she did it? Maybe Mrs. Brown or Liza did it."

"Carroll told me Polly did it herself. After she went to her room last
night. He says her light was burning awful late because she had to fix
the three caps."

"The deceitful girl! If that isn't the limit! Just wait till I see her,
I'll tell her what I think of her!"

"Now, Dotty, that's just what I don't want you to do. I knew how you'd
feel about this thing, and honest, at first I thought I wouldn't tell
you, 'cause if I hadn't, you never would have known. But we never do
have secrets from each other, and so when I found it out, I thought I
ought to tell you. But I don't want you to quarrel with Pauline about
it. Won't you let it go, Dot, and never say anything to her on the
subject?"

"No, I won't, Dolly. She told a story, or if she didn't tell it right
out, she made us think what wasn't true, and it's just the same. She
ought to be shown up. Tod and Tad and her own brother, too, ought to
know what a mean thing she did. It's only justice, Dolly, that they
should. You're so easy-going you'd forgive anything and forget it, too!
But I can't. I've got to tell that Clifton girl what I think of her.
Oh, I never heard of such meanness! Why Dollyrinda Fayre,--you or I
would scorn to do such a thing!"

"Of course we would, Dot, but I don't know as it's up to us to tell
Pauline Clifton what she ought to do."

"It isn't that, Dolly; we're not her teachers, and I don't care what she
does,--to other people. But she needn't think she can do a thing like
that, and act as if we didn't know anything, when we told her she was
wrong, and then when she finds she is wrong to go and fix it up on the
sly and pretend she was right all along! No-sir-ee! I won't stand for
it. I'll show her up in all her meanness and deceit and I'll do it
before the boys, too. She ought to be made to feel cheap! The idea!"

Dolly waited in silence until Dotty's wrath had spent itself. She had
known Dotty would act like this, but she hoped to calm her justifiable
anger.

"Well, all right, Dot," she said at last; "then if you still persist in
quarrelling with Pauline about this thing, and if you won't agree not to
say anything to her about it, then I'm going to ask you not to, just for
my sake. I don't often ask you a favour seriously, Dotty Rose, but I do
now. If you're a friend of mine and if you really care anything about
me, won't you promise, just because _I_ ask it,