“What are you saying?” whispered Arabella, but Reginald only shook his head.  “I guess I won’t tell her,” he thought, “but right after school I’ll look.”

When school was out he lingered, hoping that the girls would hurry off, and thus leave him free to search behind the wall where he believed Arabella had hidden his ball.

It was useless to wait.  The girls sat upon the wall talking until Reginald was out of patience, and when at last they started for home, Katie insisted that he must go with her.

“You know mamma said that we were to hurry home from school,” she said.

“You weren’t hurrying when you were sitting on this wall,” said Reginald.

“But I forgot, so I’m hurrying now,” Katie replied, and grasping his hand, she commenced to run very fast, laughing because he looked so unwilling.

That night there was a heavy shower that drenched the trees and left clear little puddles in the road.

Reginald reached the cottage just in time to avoid being late.

The lessons went smoothly until the readers were opened.  It was a charming story, but there were many long words which puzzled the pupils.

“The water nymphs paused in the moonlight to watch the fountain spray,” was the opening sentence of the paragraph which Reginald was to read, but the letters were spaced so that the s and p were not close together in “spray.”  Reginald read it as it appeared: 

“’The water nymphs paused in the moonlight to watch the fountains pray.’”

“Why, how could they?” he asked, “how could fountains pray?”

The class was amused, but Arabella laughed long and loudly, and Aunt Charlotte was obliged to speak forcibly to her to check her merriment.  The small boy was angry.

“I’ll get even with her; see ’f I don’t,” he thought.

Indeed he could hardly wait to punish Arabella for her rudeness.

“May I leave the yard?” he asked at recess time, “I’ve thought of one place I’d like to hunt for my ball.”

He was off like a flash, and the girls returned to their game.

“It’s your turn, Dorothy,” Nancy said, and Dorothy entered the ring.

  “From this ring that has no end
   You may choose a little friend,”

sang the merry voices, and Dorothy looked from one to another.  She would have liked to choose Nancy, but she thought how few of the girls ever chose Arabella, and she held out her hand to the playmate who seldom was favored.

If Arabella was pleased she did not show it.  She took her place in the ring, however, and looked at the merry faces that circled around her.

  “You are next the favored guest,
   Choose the friend you love the best.”

“Choose?” How could she choose?  She never liked to do a pleasant thing for any one, and whomever she called into the ring would feel favored.

“Hurry, and choose some one, Arabella,” called Mollie Merton, but still Arabella stood sullenly staring at her shoes.