"And that little girl was Mrs. Eland?" Ruth ventured to ask, for the farmer's remembrances of old times did not interest the little girls. Posy was heaping their plates with good things to eat. The picnic dinner in the woods had been forgotten.
"Yes. I reckon so," Mr. Buckham said, in answer to Ruth's inquiry. "She was kep' to help by some good people around here--just as we took Posy, marm and me. The child drifted away later. She got some schoolin'. I guess she went to a hospital and l'arned to be a nurse. Then she married a man named Eland, but he was sickly. I dunno as she ever did see her Uncle Lem."
Agnes Kenway had never been so uncomfortable in her life as she was sitting at that pleasant tea-table, at which the invalid, Mrs. Buckham, presided. And for once her usually cheerful tongue was stilled.
"What's the matter with Aggie?" asked Neale O'Neil. "Lost your tongue?"
"I believe our pretty one is bashful," suggested Mrs. Buckham, smiling upon the next to the oldest Corner House girl.
"Well, if she is, it's the first time," murmured Neale. But he said no more. Neale suddenly guessed what was troubling his girl friend, and had tact enough to keep his lips closed.
Agnes was just as honest a girl at heart as ever breathed. She did not need the reminder of the farmer's old doggerel to keep her from touching that which was not hers.
At the time when she had led the raid of the basket ball team and their friends upon Mr. Buckham's strawberry patch, she had been inspired by mere thoughtlessness and high spirits. The idea that she was trespassing--actually stealing--never entered her helter-skelter thoughts until afterward.
The field was so large, there were so many berries, and she and her mates took so few, that it really did not seem like stealing to thoughtless Agnes--no, indeed! It was just a prank.
And now to hear Bob Buckham express his horror of a thief!
"And that's what I am!" thought the bitterly repentant Agnes. "No, not a thief _now_. But I was at the time I took those berries. I am awfully sorry that I did such a thing. I--I wish I could tell him so."
That thought took fast hold upon the girl's mind. Her appreciation of the enormity of her offence had not been so great before--not even when Mr. Marks, the principal of the Milton High School, was talking so seriously to the girls about their frolic.