"I think," said Richard, judiciously¹, "I'll carry you up to the barn and wash you off; your mother might think you were permanently² disfigured if she saw you now."  
Sarah was truly a forlorn-looking object, but he tucked her under his arm and set off for the barn, trying in vain to soothe³ her as they went. Sarah wept continuously and only stopped when she was put down on the barn floor. She stopped then because someone was making more noise than she could possibly make.
 
"I don't want to hear another word," Mr. Hildreth was saying in a cold, loud voice. "Not another word. You left those grain bins⁴ open and the least you can do is to admit it like a man."
 
"I did not leave them open!" Warren's voice was as passionate⁵ and shaken as the other's was cold. "I tell you I did not! I haven't been in the barn this morning, except once to get the oil can. I wasn't near the bins."
 
Richard was pumping water into a basin and Sarah was glad he was not looking at her; She had forgotten to put the lids of the grain bins down! The door of the small washroom was jerked violently open and Warren strode in. Mr. Hildreth had evidently terminated the argument by leaving the barn.
 
"Hello, you look about as amiable⁶ as a thunder storm," Richard greeted his chum. "Got a clean handkerchief handy?"
 
Warren grimly extended a clean square.
 
"What's the matter with Sarah?" he asked curiously⁷.
 
"Oh, she's had a hard morning—thought I'd wash off some of the worst of it before she scared everyone at the house into fits," explained Richard, beginning gently on Sarah's face, with the clean handkerchief dipped in water. "What was the row?"
 
Warren's face darkened. He bit his lip.
 
"Mr. Hildreth found the whole flock of hens having a Thanksgiving dinner out of the grain bins this morning," he said in a tone which he strived to make light and even. "He insists I left the lids up and I am just as sure I didn't. In a moment of madness I might leave one up, but I never had all the bins open at the same time since I've worked here."
 
"If Mr. Hildreth had a grain of sense," pronounced Richard, looking dubiously⁸ at Sarah who still presented a sad appearance notwithstanding his ministrations, "he'd know better than to accuse you. Of course some of these children have been fooling around the bins."
 
Sarah jumped at this uncanny penetration⁹. She wanted nothing in the world so much as to get out of that washroom, away from Richard's straightforward¹⁰ gaze.
 
She edged carefully toward the door—but there was to be no escape.
 
"Sarah, were you in the barn this morning?" asked Richard.
 
Her answer was a look that Doctor Hugh would have been able to instantly interpret—it meant that Sarah had retreated into one of her obstinate¹¹, sulky silences and had made up her mind not to be forced into speech.
 
Richard turned and shot the bolt across the door.
 
"Were you in the barn this morning?" he repeated. "Answer me—but I know you were; and you must have left the grain bins open."
 
Sarah remained silent. Richard took a step toward the obdurate¹² little figure, but Warren's voice halted him.
 
"Quit it, Rich," he said quietly. "Open that door. Run along, Sarah, and next time you climb an apple tree, have a pillow on the ground ready to catch you."
 
Sarah stepped over the sill, turned around, seemed about to speak and then went silently out of the barn. She heard Richard say something and Warren's reply:
 
"Oh, what difference does it make, if she did?"
 
Mrs. Willis knew what to do for the yellow jacket stings and she knew how to cure scratched hands and arms and soothe aching little heads. She knew, too, the signs of a hurt heart—when it was Sarah's. Shirley thought her sister was merely "cranky" when she pushed her out of the swing and Rosemary decided¹³ to let Sarah severely¹⁴ alone when that small girl hurled¹⁵ her music from the piano rack and began a violent performance of "chop sticks." But Mrs. Willis waited patiently.
 
It can not be denied that Sarah made the remainder of the day a veritable "blue Monday" for her family. Secure in the privileges accorded her as an invalid¹⁶, she quarreled with Shirley and Rosemary, drove Winnie to distraction¹⁷ with repeated requests for cookies and lemonade and answered Mrs. Hildreth snappishly when that good woman stopped in for a moment's chat and generally behaved, as Winnie put it "like all possessed¹⁸."
 
And yet, when Rosemary announced at supper that Richard and Warren were going to walk to the "Center" to see a man at the creamery and that they would be back before dark and had said the girls might go with them, Sarah's refusal to go immediately convinced her sisters that she must be really ill.
 
They set off as soon as the meal was over, Rosemary and Shirley and the two boys, and Sarah curled herself, a disconsolate¹⁹ little heap, in the porch swing. And there her mother found her and in less than two minutes had the whole story, from the pathetic beginning. "The hen was awfully²⁰ sick, Mother," down to the "queer feelings" Sarah had experienced when Richard, always so good-natured and kind, had turned into an entirely²¹ different person.
 
"And I'm afraid of Mr. Hildreth," wailed²² Sarah, the tears flowing again as she ended her recital²³. "He'll yell at me, if I tell him, the way he did at Warren."
 
"Why no," said Mrs. Willis, in the most matter-of-fact tone. "Why no, he won't, Sarah. Certainly not. And you're not one bit afraid of him. He'll he sitting out on the porch now, smoking his pipe and quite ready to listen to whatever you have to tell him. You don't want Mother to go with you, do you?"
 
"Of course not," said Sarah, almost as matter-of-factly. "I'll go now, before the boys get back, Mother."
 
And away she marched to the bungalow²⁴, confidently, if not cheerfully. She had meant to ask her mother whether it would be necessary to confess that she had been the one who left the bins open, but Mrs. Willis had so evidently ............