can't go home,
I can't face them. Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!" She looked
down over her wet, green-slimed frock, so pretty and fresh but an hour
ago, and her sobs broke out again. "I'll--I'll run away--they won't want
me after this, but p'raps they'll be sorry for me when they miss me.
Oh, I wish I'd never come, I wish I'd never met Phil and Patty--they'd no
business to ask me to come with them--it was too bad of them. I wish I'd
gone straight home. If it hadn't been for Millie Higgins I should have,
and all this would have been saved. Oh, what shall I do?"

As there was no one but a few gulls to advise her, she received no
comfort, and had, after all, to settle the question for herself.

For a few moments all she did was to cry. Then, "I'll go to granny," she
decided. "She'll be glad to have me, and she won't scold. Yes, I'll go
to granny. Father and mother will be glad to be rid of me--I--I'm nothing
but a trouble to them!" But, all the same, she felt so sorry for herself
she could scarcely see where she was going for the tears which blinded
her.

CHAPTER VII.

Mona's first thought was to avoid being seen by anyone who would recognise
her; her second--that she must keep out of sight as much as possible until
her dress was dry, and her face less disfigured, for anyone meeting her
now would stop her to enquire if she had met with an accident.

By keeping along the shore for some little distance it was possible to get
out on to the high road to Milbrook, but it was not an easy path to
travel. It meant continued climbing over rocks, ploughing through loose,
soft sand, or heavy wet sand, clinging to the face of a cliff and
scrambling along it, or wading through deep water.

What her new pink frock would be like by the time she reached the road
Mona did not care to contemplate. "It will be ruined for ever--
the first time of wearing, too," and a sob caught in her throat as she
remembered how her mother had toiled to get the material, and then to make
the dress. Now that she was losing her she realised how much she had
grown to love her mother in the short time she had lived with her, and how
good and kind Lucy had been. It never occurred to her that she was
doubling her mother's trouble by running away in this cowardly fashion.
Indeed, she would have been immensely surprised if anyone had hinted at
such a thing. She was convinced that she was doing something very heroic
and self-denyin