Hilda waked next morning after but an hour or two’s sleep. Last night she had been sure she couldn’t sleep at all. She’d lain for a long time, it seemed to her, going over and over everything she had said to Pearse, all he’d said to her, bringing back his every look and gesture.

Now, as she opened her eyes on last night’s party dress lying over the chair, last night’s ornaments strewing her bureau top, the happy sense of security that had come in dreams, that had pervaded those dreamy waking thoughts, threatened to leave her. Pearse wasn’t going away to be married; he was more her friend than ever; he was more charming, finer even, than she remembered him; to be with him was more delightful—but—

Oh, why hadn’t she managed better about Pearse? Why hadn’t she said to Mrs. Marchbanks last night that she’d known him a long time—that her father and mother had known him and his parents years ago? The fatal flaw in that was that she hadn’t mentioned it when she first came over to the Alamositas. And that came about because she’d deceived Uncle Hank about him. She sighed and looked about her room, wondering how late it was.

There came a tap on the connecting door; she knew that sharp rattling knock; Maybelle must be up and dressed already; then she heard Mrs. Marchbanks saying:

“Don’t wake her. Plenty of time when she comes down stairs. She’ll surely want to go—any girl would.”

But Maybelle had already stepped inside and shut her stepmother out. Last night, when they were alone together, the girls had been very silent; no talking over the dance. This morning Maybelle stopped in the middle of the room and stared half frowningly at Hilda, sitting up in bed smiling at her, a tumble of dark hair over her shoulders.

“Hilda—what’s the matter with you this morning?”

“Nothing. Do I look awfully tired?”

“Tired!” Maybelle turned to the bureau, and continued to study Hilda’s face as it showed in the glass there. “You don’t look as if you ever had been tired in your life—or ever would be. Riding twenty miles—racing at that—and dancing all night seems to agree with you.”

“I guess it does.” Hilda slipped out of bed and into a bathrobe and began to lay out what she was going to wear. Maybelle settled herself on the bed edge.

“Run along and get your bath. I’ll wait for you here. Something I want to talk to you about.”

Hilda came back, rosy, refreshed, declaring:

“I’d like to go to another dance to-night. I never felt so utterly rested in my life.”

“All right. That’s what I want to talk about. Mother’s been afraid you’d be too used up to care to ride over and see the doings on County Day—it’s to-morrow, you know.”

“I did know,” Hilda said doubtfully, for Fayte had been talking to her about County Day. So far as she could see, it offered only a chance for him to hang about her and push his usual tactics of monopolizing her. “I’m not sure I want to go, Maybelle. I don’t think we ought to break up the lessons so much.”

“Don’t you?” Maybelle waited a long minute, then added just three words:

“He’ll be there.”

Hilda, bent low over tying her slippers, tried to think of something careless to say, and finally ejaculated weakly:

“Oh—will he?”

“Yes, he will. Everybody goes; small parties; just the Burketts and Lefty Adams and some of the other boys in our crowd. But you’ll get a chance to see him again—if I help you.”

Hilda glanced up, startled; Maybelle was smiling at her meaningly.

“When there’s somebody you want to see, and you can’t get a chance to without sneaking it—”

“It isn’t the way you think—”

“How do you know what I think?” Maybelle interrupted. “What you blushing so for? I’ll bet anything that I’ve got that it is—and more so. You’re carrying on with a man that your folks don’t know anything about. Well—I’m sort of glad. Helps me out.”

“I’m not—”

“Yes, you are. If it wasn’t a secret affair—you’d have told Ma and Pa as soon as you came over here that you were acquainted with Pearse Masters—that he’d visited at the Three Sorrows. Caught you that time!” Maybelle looked like Fayte when she grinned that way. “Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You help me out and I’ll help you out. There’s some one in the town crowd that’ll be out at the picnic grounds County Day that I want to see—that I’ve got to see. I guess you know who it is. Same fellow that stole a ride with me on the way to the dance last night. The one you saw in the store the other day. You do what you can to get me my chance to speak to him, and I’ll get Mrs. Burkett to invite Pearse Masters to eat lunch with her. Pa can’t say a word if Mrs. Burkett gives the invitation—and then throws in with us, and she’s going to do that.”

“He won’t come,” said Hilda faintly.

“Oh, won’t he?” jeered Maybelle. “Well, I wish I was as sure that I’d get a chance to talk to the one I want to see as I am that Pearse Masters is from now on going to go to any place he thinks he’ll see you. He’ll camp on your trail, all right, if I’m any judge. Huh,” with a little excited giggle, “didn’t you like the way he put it all over Ma? Say—he’s the kind that runs things his own way, isn’t he? The Masterses were rich. He’s been used to money—in the East—and in Europe. Does make an awful difference in a fellow. I don’t wonder you’re crazy about him.”

“Maybelle—” Hilda broke off. What was the use? Maybelle’s mind—her way of looking at things—was her own. Hilda couldn’t say to her that the friendship between herself and Pearse Masters was a very different thing from any secret affair she, Maybelle, might have with that older man, with his strange, hard face. From the window where she stood, Maybelle glanced sharply over her shoulder at Hilda; then, as though she were answering an argument that had been carried on aloud, said in a flat voice:

“Well, there’s Mrs. Burkett turning in at the store, now. Shall I go over and fix it so she’ll invite Pearse Masters? Shall I—or shan’t I?”

“Yes—go—quick!” cried Hilda, all in one breath. “Hurry. She might be gone before you get over there.”

The two girls raced down the stairs, passed Fayte in the hall; he looked around and called, “What’s the grand rush?” But they didn’t stop. Half way to the gate, Hilda caught up little Jinnie, who was playing, and hugged her tempestuously.

Five minutes later, Maybelle, returning from her errand, found the two of them sitting on the Bermuda grass, playing cat’s cradle. Maybelle whispered:

“I made her invite him. She wasn’t going to, but I told her he was an old friend of yours, and that your folks thought a great deal of him.”

“Oh, Maybelle—you oughtn’t to have said that last; it isn’t true.”

“Whiskerin’ secrets! Whiskerin’ secrets!” squealed Jinnie. “I hear you two girls whiskerin’ your secrets!”

“I thought that was what you said.” Maybelle’s face was as innocent as a pan of milk. “Anyhow—it’s done now. You just keep quiet—and it’ll work out all right.”

Hilda was quiet enough, outwardly; but she could never have told how she got through the day that followed. Yet she did get through it without actual betrayals.

Maybelle was in the kitchen, making tamales for to-morrow’s lunch. Hilda, at a desk, elbows on it to prop her face into studying position, had no realization of how time passed. She had drifted so far away from her surroundings that Miss Ferguson’s hesitating, embarrassed voice startled her, saying almost in Maybelle’s exact words:

“Hilda—what is it?”

“What is what?”

“If there was—anything—if you needed advice—you could come to me, you know.”

“Advice?” Hilda came to herself with a jerk. She glanced from the book in front of her to her teacher’s face. “I don’t need anything, thank you. I am all right. Everything’s all right.” Poor Miss Ferguson—what would she know? What could she do, or say? No use. You had to keep such things to yourself and do the best you could with them. She seized her pencil and went to work again, saying softly, without looking up, “You’re very kind—but it’s all right.”