!

"You've got a cold, I see," said Mary. "You ought to have known you
would, sitting down in the wind on those rocks. Your mother won't let
you go out again in a hurry I can tell you. It's certainly been
something of a party. The Lewisons know how to do things, I'll say that
for them, though Hazel Lewison is no choice of mine. My, how black she
looked when she saw you dancing with Ken Ford. And so did that little
hussy of an Ethel Reese. What a flirt he is!"

"I don't think he's a flirt," said Rilla as defiantly as two desperate
sniffs would let her.

"You'll know more about men when you're as old as I am," said Mary
patronizingly. "Mind you, it doesn't do to believe all they tell you.
Don't let Ken Ford think that all he has to do to get you on a string
is to drop his handkerchief. Have more spirit than that, child."

To be thus hectored and patronized by Mary Vance was unendurable! And
it was unendurable to walk on stony roads with blistered heels and bare
feet! And it was unendurable to be crying and have no handkerchief and
not to be able to stop crying!

"I'm not thinking"--sniff--"about Kenneth"--sniff--"Ford"--two
sniffs--"at all," cried tortured Rilla.

"There's no need to fly off the handle, child. You ought to be willing
to take advice from older people. I saw how you slipped over to the
sands with Ken and stayed there ever so long with him. Your mother
wouldn't like it if she knew."

"I'll tell my mother all about it--and Miss Oliver--and Walter," Rilla
gasped between sniffs. "You sat for hours with Miller Douglas on that
lobster trap, Mary Vance! What would Mrs. Elliott say to that if she
knew?"

"Oh, I'm not going to quarrel with you," said Mary, suddenly retreating
to high and lofty ground. "All I say is, you should wait until you're
grown-up before you do things like that."

Rilla gave up trying to hide the fact that she was crying. Everything
was spoiled--even that beautiful, dreamy, romantic, moonlit hour with
Kenneth on the sands was vulgarized and cheapened. She loathed Mary
Vance.

"Why, whatever's wrong?" cried mystified Mary. "What are you crying
for?"

"My feet--hurt so--" sobbed Rilla clinging to the last shred of her
pride. It was less humiliating to admit crying because of your feet
than because--because somebody had been amusing himself with you, and
your friends had forgotten you, and other people patronized you.

"I daresay they do," said Mary, not unkindly. "Never mind. I k