"I'll do it if you like, Dolly, but I'm quite sure you'd tell her
everything yourself. You're not a bit of a coward, Dolly, because when
you've done something wrong you never try to pretend that it was the
fault of someone else, or an accident."

"Do you think I ought to tell Miss Eleanor myself?" said Dolly,
wistfully. "I will if you say so, Bessie, but I'd much rather not."

"No, I'll tell her," Bessie decided. "I think you're mistaken about
yourself, Dolly, and the reason I'm going to tell her is because I think
you'd make her think you were worse than you were, instead of not
telling her the whole thing. Do you see?"

"You're ever so good, Bessie. Really, I'm going to try to stop worrying
you so much after this. It seems to me that you're always having things
to bother you on account of me."

Miss Eleanor, at first, like Dolly, was inclined to laugh at what
Bessie told her of the gypsy and his absurd suggestion that Dolly should
stay with his tribe until she was old enough to be married to him.

"Why, he must have been joking, Bessie," she said. "You say he talked
well; as if he were educated? Then he surely knows that no American girl
would take such an idea seriously for a moment."

"But American girls do live with the gypsies and marry them, Miss
Eleanor. Often, I've heard of that. And if you'd seen him when he got in
our way on the trail you'd know why he frightened me. His face was
perfectly black, he was so angry. And when Dolly laughed at him he