“NOW you see, Emeline Frances,” said Celia, pushing herself up among the pillows and speaking in slow, stern tones to the dollie lying on her arm, “it is really your fault, and no other person’s; if you hadn’t been bound and determined to go out this afternoon, why, we shouldn’t have gone, that’s all. It had been raining, of course it had, and the walks were all damp, and you had no rubbers to wear over these shoes. Besides all that, you had been told that you must not go out this afternoon; but you were so vain of your new dress and hat, and so anxious to show them to Lulu Parks, that you would insist on going, and making me get my feet wet. Now here we are! A whole hour yet before it will be dark, and just a lovely time to play, and company downstairs in the parlor, and just the kind of cake for tea that I like the best, and we have to come upstairs and go to bed! I hope you are satisfied, Emeline Frances, with your afternoon’s work. I shouldn’t have thought of going out if you hadn’t have been so crazy to show your new hat. It is just a pity that you think so much of fine clothes. The dampness took the curl all out of your new feather, and it will never be so pretty again; but you had your own way, and will have to take the consequences. The worst of it is that you make me suffer with you. If this were the first time you had disobeyed perhaps I shouldn’t feel so badly, but as it is, I am almost discouraged. I do not see how you can be so naughty and forgetful.”

The lecture closed with one of Celia’s longest sighs. The door which led from her room to her brother Stuart’s was ajar, and he, sitting at his desk supposed to be studying his Latin for the next day, listened with the most unqualified amusement to the whole of it. He repeated the story downstairs at the tea-table, amid bursts of laughter from the entire family, his mother excepted.

“Mamma looks as grave as a judge over it,” Stuart said at last, when the laugh had subsided. “What’s the matter, mamma? Don’t you think the poor baby’s version of her troubles is funny?”

“It has its funny side,” said Mrs. Campbell, with a grave smile upon her face, “but really, it has its sad side too. You are a very good mimic, my son, and gave Celia’s voice and manner to perfection, in doing which you have reminded me of her besetting sin. Have you never noticed that the child, in her own estimation, is always led into trouble through the fault of others? If she cannot blame Nora, or Josie, or some of her playmates, why then poor Emeline Frances has to bear it. I am really very much troubled by this habit of hers. To judge from Celia’s statement of the case, she is forever led astray by the evil propensities of other people. If it were true, it would be sad enough, to have a child so easily led in the wrong way; but sometimes there is as much foundation for her theory as there is in this case, when the vanity of poor Emeline Frances is supposed to have caused all the trouble. I have tried to reason the child out of such excuses, but when she reaches the folly of actually blaming the doll for leading her astray, I hardly know what to think of her.”

“It is a curious development,” said Celia’s father, “but I have known older and wiser people than she to indulge in it; I knew a young man once, who charged a moonlight night of unusual beauty with all the folly of which he was guilty that evening.”

After this sentence Stuart Campbell finished his supper in silence, with his eyes on his plate; but perhaps no one but his father knew that his cheeks were redder than usual.

Pansy.