LILY’S PREACHMENT.
“To-morrow the machinery stops for two weeks,” said Lily, as she
critically examined her Sunday gown before laying it in her trunk.
“Aren’t you glad of it? I am,” said Edna, rather spitefully throwing
her _Ladies’ Reader_ into the back of a closet.
“Not so very. ’Cause why? the machinery’s got to begin again in a
fortnight, and it’s hard to ‘pick up the shovel and de hoe-o-o’ after
you’ve left them lie idle while you’ve ‘scraped de fiddle wid de
bow-o-o,’” said and sang Lily, still poring over her crimson serge.
“Ah, ha! I have him,” she continued.
“Have what?”
“The small but deadly American bison, the reveler in wool, the
destroyer of homes, the blighter of clothes--the living, eating,
riotous buffalo-bug. Here in the folds of my crimson gown I traced his
fell path. Now, Eureka! I have found him, and in the interest of my
fellow-mortals I will impale him on a pin and broil him on a burning
match.”
“Poor little bug!” said Elfie, watching him shrivel.
“He don’t mind it much,” said Lily, “or if he did he doesn’t now. I’m
not fond of killing things, pet, but buffalo-bugs must die. Is it not
so, fellow-citizens?”
The fellow-citizens to whom she appealed were represented by Edna,
Katie, Marion, Fannie, and Bell. They all laughed except Bell. She
looked very solemn.
“O, my dear Bell,” said Lily, “was Mr. Buffalo Bug a friend of yours?
Your smileless face, your solemn eyes, terrify me. This tragedy has
wounded you. O, how little did I think that the pale martyr--no, I beg
his pardon, the brown and yellow, fuzzy martyr--at the stake was dear
to you. Why was I born to make you suffer thus?”
“Stop,” said Fannie; “you’re too silly for any thing, Lily. What ails
Bell is that she don’t like to go home to-morrow without telling Mrs.
Abbott that we went to the station alone.”
“And why doesn’t she tell?” asked Lily, growing grave instantly.
“Because I don’t want her to,” said Fannie. “The thing is past and
gone, and there’s no use in reviving it.”
“That’s where you’re right,” said Edna. “What a fool you’d be to go
and tell on yourselves now. Mrs. Abbott never’ll find out if you don’t
tell, and what Bell wants to get herself and you into a muss for I,
for one, don’t see. There was some danger, I thought myself, that the
delightful young man would speak of it to her. But he’s evidently a
fraud; no man who wanted to put his sister at school would climb up and
grin at the girls over the back fence.”
“Hardly,” said Fannie, “and I’m glad you think as I do. Bell’s too
tiresome for any thing.”
“Fannie, you said yourself that you couldn’t bear to keep a thing back
just for fear of marks or punishment,” said Bell.
“Well, I didn’t say I’d never smile again, did I? I’m awfully sorry we
went to the station. It was taking a mean advantage of Miss Blake when
she asked us to wait for her at the milliner’s. It was tricky, and I
don’t defend it, but I do say that, as we did let the time for talking
go by, there’s no use raking the matter up now.”
“Why don’t you tell, Bell, if Fannie wont?” asked Katie, who was
writing some last pages in her diary, and so had not been an attentive
listener.
“What a sneaky idea!” said Bell, rousing herself from the gloom which
had settled upon her. “I can’t tell without involving Fannie, and I
won’t be such a sneak as to do that.”
“Now, my little children,” said Lily, “let me give you a leaf out of
my experience. The first year I was here I stole a pie! I did; I stole
a pie, I did. It doesn’t seem like a crime to me now; it seems rather
funny; but I used to lie awake nights thinking of it then. It happened
upon this wise, my little dears. One of the girls was going to give
a ‘rampage’--that is, a night-gown party after bed-time. Mrs. Abbott
has put a stop to that species of entertainment, and I don’t know as
I am sorry, for we used to take terrific colds flying about in our
fairy-like attire. We always indulged in some form of refreshment,
generally crackers and pea-nuts. The latter article of diet, I may
remark in passing, was apt to produce pallor the next morning. The
night in question--don’t I sound like a magazine article?--we found
ourselves minus even the sober cracker and the festive pea-nut, and
one of the girls dared me to steal down the back stairs and hook--that
is what she called it; I keep nothing back--hook a pie. She didn’t say
‘hook, hook, a pie,’ but I have noticed that authors always express
things that way, so I repeated the word. Well, to resume; in my callow
youth I held that to dare meant to do, so I did. I hied me to the dark
and grewsome kitchen, crept stealthily to the pantry, and crawled
through a window that communicated with the dining-room pantry. Ah,
the recollection paralyzes me! ‘Not a drum was heard, not a funeral
note,’ as the pie up the dark stairs I carried. Let me hasten to the
end before emotion overcomes me. At the top of the stairs were a group
of white-clad ghosts, semi-distinct in the faint light that a clouded
moon sent through the skylight. Some of the ghosts giggled, some said,
‘Sh, sh,’ and the phantom sounds disturbed Miss Blake, I think, for a
door opened far around the corner and a glimmer of light approached.
The ghosts vanished and sheltered themselves in various beds, where
their slumbers became intense. I could not fly to a bed, because I
dared not take another step forward, for the stately form, with a dim
night-light, had turned the corner.
“I was near the top of the stairs when the distant ray first appeared.
I reached the stolen treasure up to the girls and flew swiftly
down-stairs again and through the school-room to the front hall--I knew
every body was in bed--and up the front stairs to my room, which was
over in the new part. As a cruel fate decreed, the girls were in too
great a panic to secure the pie I handed up to them, and left it on the
floor.
“My beloved hearers, cease these frivolous howls of laughter. The
matter is serious. THE PIE WAS PUMPKIN, AND MISS BLAKE STEPPED IN
IT!”
Lily’s listeners were shrieking with laughter over her droll recital,
but she preserved a preternaturally solemn expression, which still more
excited their mirth.
“Girls,” said she at last, “I intended this for a preachment, and how
am I to give you the moral unless you refrain from this untimely mirth?”
“O, Lily, don’t look so funny!” gasped Katie, throwing herself on the
bed and holding her sides.
“Don’t look at me, but listen, then, for I only told the story to get
the moral in, so I can’t skip it. I wanted to tell Mrs. Abbott I took
the pie, but the girls wouldn’t let me. I was just about as happy in my
mind and jovial in my countenance as Bell seems to be.”
“Was there any fuss made?” asked Edna.
“O, plenty; Miss Blake was very angry at the outrage, she called
it, and seemed to think the pie was planted there for a sort of
trap to catch her in. Mrs. Abbott talked about it in school in that
solemn-sweet way of hers and said she would like the offender to
come to her room. I wasn’t brave enough to accept that invitation
in defiance of the girls, and the next morning she made a new rule
forbidding any girl to go into another one’s room after bed-time. At
last the burden of my secret grew too tormenting, and three weeks after
the lark I crawled into her room and confessed.”
“What did she say?” asked Fannie and Bell together.
“O, I wither up small when I think of it. She looked up from her
Kensington work and said in the calmest way, ‘I knew it was you, dear,
for I saw you fly up the front stairs. I was in the dark closet in the
hall groping for an extra blanket, and old Margaret found a narrow
Roman ribbon, the next morning, that had been tied around a braid, in
the dining-room pantry. I recognized the ribbon as yours.’ And she took
it from her desk and handed it to me.”
“You must have felt cheap!”
“O, my! And I felt worse still when she took my hand and said, ‘Lily,
I have not cared a straw for your taking the pie, but it has hurt me
to learn you were not high-principled enough to own what you had done!’
There I had been playing the innocent and unconscious, and she knew
what I had done, and she had never told Miss Blake. I tell you, Bell,
Mrs. Abbott is an angel, and ever since that time I have preferred
telling her any thing to keeping it to myself.”
“Is that the moral?” asked Edna.
“Perhaps you don’t see it. Well, I’ll make it plainer. Don’t conceal
your omissions and commissions from Mrs. Abbott; and, Fannie, you’ll be
more comfortable if you let Bell go and tell her.”
Fannie hesitated a moment, then half sullenly gave her permission, and
Bell flew off on her not too easy errand.
The other girls went off in different directions, all but Marion, who
surprised Lily by seizing both her hands and exclaiming:
“O, dear, dear Lily, I thank you so!”
“You are extremely welcome,” Lily said, with a greatly puzzled gaze
at her, “although I hardly see why you should be so grateful simply
because my eloquence persuaded poor Bell into a penitential P. P. C. on
Mrs. Abbott. Perhaps I wakened your conscience. Have you stolen a pie
or taken a trip to the station?”
Marion laughed, but did not explain, and her heart was very light; for
now Mrs. Abbott could ask Bell all the questions she wanted and learn
all the particulars of the girls’ encounter with the suspicious young
man.