and except for Betty, Pony would everlastingly have disgraced herself.
There are many persons in the world whom the sight of blood fills with a
strange shrinking and terror that is almost like faintness, and Polly
was one of them. Now she wanted to run away, she even turned to fly,
when her friend caught hold of her. "Don't be utterly stupid, Polly,
you have done a foolish trick and you've got to face the music, for if
you don't, you know Mollie is apt to take the blame upon herself."

Polly's knees were shaking and her thin expressive face so pale that she
looked quite unlike herself. However, she managed to save a part of her
dignity by saying with an attempt at a smile, as she stopped alongside
Mollie and the young fellow, "I am sorry, I cannot tell a lie, I did it
with my little hatchet, so please feel all the anger against me. I do
hope I haven't hurt you very much."

The young man now stared at Polly and then at Mollie and afterwards back
again from one to the other. He started to whistle but stopped himself
in time. "Gee, but you are alike--with a difference," he returned,
neither accepting nor refusing to accept Polly's half-hearted apology.

Hardly knowing why, except that the back of his neck was apparently
covered with perspiration when there was no heat to explain it, the boy
again put up his hand to his head. This time it was impossible to
ignore the amount of blood that covered his hand nor the horrified faces
of his small audience.

"I expect I can't go up to your camp, after all, when I am in such a
fix, so you've come kind of close to getting your own way. I guess you,
usually do!" he said, frowning up at Polly. "I wonder if it is too much
to ask you girls to carry these things up to your tents; the pail has