“Alec and I were picking currants at Aunt Sarah’s when I heard a voice behind me, and I never knew before what it meant when I read in books, that ‘their hearts were in their mouths.’ I thought mine would beat its way right out of me and lie thumping at my feet when I heard a voice say: ‘Oh, here are my little friends from Erin’s Isle.’ I suppose it is because I am very bad that it never occurred to me until that minute that fooling a minister, by pretending to be the peddler’s children, was not right, especially when it was Alec’s and my singing songs in what we made him believe was Gaelic that made him buy so many more things. I wonder if all people who do wrong only feel badly when they are found out? I turned around and I thought I should fall, for my mother was with him, and Aunt Sarah and uncle and our own minister. Uncle Ephraim had not heard what he said, and now, ‘Permit me, Mr. Sweetser,’ he said, ‘to present my little niece, Ellen, Mrs. Payne’s little daughter, and our neighbor, Master Alec Yorke.’ I saw him wondering if we really could be the same children, because, while we were playing that we were the peddler’s children, we had taken off our shoes and stockings to make ourselves look like wild Irish children, and had succeeded very well, indeed. I thought for a moment that perhaps he wouldn’t say anything, but Aunt Sarah’s ears were open. ‘What was that? Did I hear you say “your little friends from Erin”? Have you seen these children before?’ This was an awful moment. ‘These are the same children that came with the Irish peddler to my house.’ ‘Ha! Ha! I knew that those children were gone for no good, Emily, and that they were strangely silent about their exploits,’ Aunt Sarah said. ‘Do you mean,’ said Uncle Ephraim, ‘that my niece and Horace Yorke’s son made believe to be the children of a drunken, Irish peddler, and thus appeared before you?’ ‘Not only that,’ said Mr. Sweetser sadly, ‘but they sang to us in Gaelic.’ ‘Gaelic,’ snorted Aunt Sarah; ‘never a word does she know of Gaelic. I have heard her making up gibberish to the tunes that that peddler sings on his way.’ Here Alec acted extremely noble, though it annoyed me very much, and I am sure that I am a very ungrateful girl that it did annoy me. He spoke right up and said: ‘Mr. Grant, it is all my fault. It was I who thought of being children of the Irish peddler and I who suggested that we hop on his cart. I should take all the blame.’ There was not one word of truth in this, for we had often ridden with the peddler before, and the idea of playing that we were his children was my own, and without thinking I told them so. ‘Let us say no more about this childish prank,’ said Mr. Sweetser. ‘These children have shown real nobility, the little lad in desiring to shield Miss Ellen and Miss Ellen in not permitting herself to be shielded.’ Well, I knew that we should have more of it and plenty later, and we did when Aunt Sarah came ravening—there is no other word to use for it, though I know it is not polite—down to our house. It all oppressed me very much, even though Alec whispered: ‘We can make-believe we are being persecuted by the Philistines.’ I know I have disgraced the family, but I shall never understand why riding with the peddler should do this. If our family is any good, it should take more than this. Uncle Ephraim and Aunt Sarah have said that I am really too old to act as I do. When I answer, ‘But if I act so, doesn’t it show that I am not too old, Aunt Sarah?’ she says: ‘Mercy, my child, as tall as any flagpole and with legs like a beanstalk, you’ve got to be acting like a young lady. We can’t have young women of our family getting a ridiculous name.’ This means that I must give up Alec. ‘Why you want that child around all the time is incomprehensible to me,’ said my aunt. ‘You are a good head higher than he is.’ People are always measuring things in length and breadth. How can one measure one’s friends by the pound? Roberta agrees with them. She thinks I am giddy, and feels that she must be good for me. I love Roberta more than any other earthly being beside mamma, but when Roberta tries to be good for me, I am so wicked that I try to be bad for Roberta, and can very easily be so.”