"You forget," said Randolph, with a look across the table at Nan, "that if it hadn't been for Nan, Trouble would never have gone in search of you," and then and there Nan forgave him for his rude speech of the day before.
"If I hadn't come home, I would never have thought of sending him," she acknowledged. "He ought to have a medal, bless him."
"So he shall have," said Ran, and he gravely provided a tin medal on which was scratched: "For Heroic Service." This was fastened to the dog's collar and it was worn proudly.
However much Nan may have felt that Ran had made amends, the boy himself did not consider that he had and came to his cousin as she was tidying up the living-room. "Are you going to church, Nan?" he asked.
"I don't know," she replied. "I feel as if I had been drawn through a knot-hole this morning. Of course, Mary Lee won't go and maybe I'll stay at home to keep her company, though she's still asleep, poor child."
"I thought if you were going I'd wait for you," said Ran.
Nan threw him a mocking smile. "I thought you didn't care for my company," she said.
"That was yesterday," returned Ran. "Besides, I didn't say I didn't want your company; I said I didn't want you to stay up there on the mountain and so I didn't, for I was afraid then that those two were lost and I knew it would be harder for you there than at home. Then I knew if we set out on a search you couldn't go and it would not do to leave you all alone."
"I realized all that afterward," Nan told him frankly.
"Then we have made up," said Ran with boyish eagerness.
"Of course," returned Nan. "I was miffed only for a few minutes. I knew before we got home that you spoke as you did so I wouldn't insist upon staying. Still," she added, "it was hard to go off and leave one's sister to wildcats, though I must say Mary Lee isn't thinking much about them at this moment, and I hope she isn't dreaming about them. There comes Phil, so he is all right. Mary Lee says he was so brave and manly, little as he is."
Phil joined them. "Say, did any of you see my watch?" were his first words.
"Why, no," replied the two. "Have you lost it, Phil?" asked Nan.
"I'm afraid so. I must have caught the chain on something in the woods and snapped it so the watch fell out when I stooped over. The end of the chain was hanging from the buttonhole when I looked last night after I came home, but the watch was gone."