I let the spade fall and sat down again upon the seat, and sobbed for very disappointment. Ah, what a triumph it would have been to be able, the very first day, to discomfit that horrid Silas Tunstall by finding the treasure and setting at rest, at once and for all time, the question of the ownership of this beautiful place! “Oh, I say,” exclaimed a low voice just over my head, “you mustn’t do that, you know! Can’t I help you?” [Pg 62] [Pg 62] I jumped up with a little cry, for the voice was so near it frightened me. There, sitting on the wall just above me, was a boy. He had his cap in his hand, and I saw that his hair was brown and very curly. “I’d like to help you,” he repeated earnestly; “that is, if you’ll let me.” He waved his cap to me with a half-timid, friendly, reassuring gesture. “Oh!” I said, turning red with shame at the thought that I had been caught crying. “Oh, I must go!” “No, don’t go,” he protested. “If you’re going because I’m here, I’ll go myself.” “Oh, no; it’s not at all on your account,” I explained politely. “But it must be very nearly dinner-time,” and I glanced at the brilliant afterglow which transfigured the western heavens. Then I glanced at him. He was distinctly a nice-looking boy, and after the surprise of the first moment, I felt no very great desire to go away. “It isn’t late,” he reassured me. “It can’t be dinner-time, yet. May I come down?” I eyed him doubtfully. He seemed rather a self-assured boy, and I wondered what Dick would [Pg 63]think of him. I wondered if he thought me a molly-coddle because he had seen me crying. I shared all Dick’s horror of girls or boys who cry. Then I wondered if my eyes were very red, and wiped them with my handkerchief. [Pg 63] “The wall,” I ventured, “was probably put there to keep people out.” “Not to keep one’s friends out,” he protested. “One ought to be glad if one’s friends are willing to climb over such a high wall to see one.” He was smiling in the pleasantest way, and I really couldn’t help smiling back.
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