“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.