"I can hear you, Claire. 'That is just like you, Nancy Leavitt--swear you're going to do one thing and doing another.' Yes, darling, it is like me, I'll admit! But this time it's different. I really did intend to be very haughty and distant each time I saw the man but--I couldn't. Could you, if you had just been running a race which included vaulting a stone wall? I had to run the race to win Davy's respect and I had to jump the wall--well, to show I could! And of course I never dreamed the creature was anywhere around. But he sprang up from the earth, I believe, and was there at the finish. And could _you_ look haughty with every hair pin dropping out of your head? "And, anyway, afterwards, he explained something that has made everything different, but that comes later in my story. "Today it rained for the first time since I've been in North Hero. A sort of steady pitter-patter, not the kind of a downpour that makes you hug shelter, but a splashy sort you long to run out in with your face turned up. All morning long I sat with the aunts (Aunt Milly was so disappointed when she saw the rain that I brought her down to the hollyhock porch and made her all comfy there) and I simply couldn't stand it all afternoon so, after lunch, I stole away. Now Happy House is divided (thank goodness) into two parts, so if the aunts are on one side it is easy to slip out of the other. I put on my slicker and cap and slipped away. I frisked around in the rain drops for awhile, then, I started toward the orchard to see if my water-proof box was water-proof. And as I walked down the path I heard the sound of hammering from the direction of my Nest. 'A-ha,' says I, 'I will surprise nice Mr. Webb at his work!' So I crept up on tiptoe. And, oh, Claire, it wasn't Mr. Webb _at all--it was Peter Hyde_! There he was with a hammer and a saw and some nails in a funny apron he had tied around him working away with the rain spattering through the leaves right into his face. "I was so surprised I thought I'd run back, but just at that moment he saw me. And of course, the way I always do when I shouldn't, I began to laugh. And he laughed, too, though he _was_ embarrassed.