The rhyme she had been chanting was sufficient explanation.
"I thought you said," he began, teasingly, "that you were to have _your_ innings when you were a grandmother; that you didn't care for beauty now if you could have a face like a benediction then." "Oh, I didn't say that I didn't care!" cried Mary, crouching closer against the monument, and putting her arm across her face to hide it.
"It's because I care so much that I'm always doing silly things and getting caught.

I just wish the earth could open and swallow me!" she wailed.
Her head was bowed now till it was resting on her knees.

Rob looked down on the little bunch of misery in the gay kimono, thinking he had never seen such a picture of woe.

He could not help smiling, but he felt mean at having been the cause of her distress, and tried to think of something comforting to say.
"Sakes alive, child! That's nothing to feel bad about.

Bathing your face in May-day dew is an old English custom that the prettiest girls in the Kingdom used to follow.