lady carefully out on to
the pebbles. "You have been envied of us all. But here is a little boy
come to tell you all the same how sorry he is that he gave you such a
fright. Olly, my lad, I think Miss Delano looks as if she had forgiven
you through and through."

"Oh, indeed, indeed yes," answered Miss Delano, hurriedly. "It was
only my silly way of being scared, particularly when I'm roused up so
sudden out of one of those turns of mine. And it's all right, my dear,
all right."

"But I'm sorry, real and honest," declared Olly, stoutly, looking
squarely in Miss Delano's kindly face. "And I didn't mean to scare you."

"You meant it for a revenge on me, I suppose," said Gerald, in a low,
harsh voice. She took hold of his arm as she spoke. "Give me those
marbles of yours."

Olly looked at her, hesitated, and then reluctantly produced three very
handsome agates from some outlying storehouse of his jacket.

"I bought you six," said Gerald. "Where are the rest?"

"I lost one," answered Olly, sullenly. "It fell down a hole."

"Then give me the other two."

Olly obeyed still more reluctantly, fixing great, anxious eyes upon his
treasures as he laid them, each one more slowly than the last, in his
sister's hand.

"There," said Gerald. "Perhaps this will teach you to behave better
another time. I shall not buy you any more this summer." She flung out
her hand suddenly, and the five pretty stones fell with a splash far out
in the lake and disappeared forever, five little cruel sets of circles
instantly beginning to widen and widen over their graves in a perfect
mockery of roundness. Olly gave one sharp cry, and then stood
stock-still, a bitterly hard look coming over his face; those marbles had
been very, very dear to his heart. Halloway put his arm tenderly around
the little fellow, and drew him close in a very sympathetic way.

"Olly," he said, gently, "you know you deserved some punishment, but now
that your sister has punished you, I am sure she will forgive you too, as
Miss Delano has done, if you only ask her."

Olly buried his face in his friend's coat, and burst into a fit of
heart-broken tears. "I don't want her to forgive me," he sobbed. "I only
want my agates,--my pretty, pretty agates!"

"Surely you will forgive him?" pleaded Halloway, looking up at Gerald
over Olly's head, and holding out one of the boy's hands in his own. "He
was really penitent when you came up. Let me ask for him."

Gerald moved a s