"I'm as glad as can be," said Moppet, who was troubled with no
conscientious scruples whatsoever, and was now beginning to enjoy
herself intensely at sharing a mystery with Betty; "I told him you were
gone, after the big clock struck three, and oh, Betty, he kissed my hand
through the hole in the chimney."

"Did he?" said Betty, flushing brightly under Moppet's keen glance.

"And I sat there and shivered," went on Moppet, discreetly dropping that
branch of the subject, "for I could hear his feet as he climbed, and
once he slipped and I was so frightened lest he should come tumbling
down and our fine plot be discovered. Betty, Betty, what a fine flutter
Oliver and Josiah will be in at breakfast!"

"Don't talk of it," said Betty, shivering in her turn; "go to sleep,
Moppet, and I will fly to my chamber, for it is not well that I should
be discovered here, dressed. Oliver is not one to notice; now lie still
until you are called for rising;" and Betty tripped back to her own
room, where, tearing off her dress, she threw her tired little self on
the bed to rest, if not to sleep, for the short hours that remained
before breakfast.

The Wolcott household was one that was early astir, however, and Chloe,
the old colored cook, was out in the barn searching for eggs, and Miss
Bidwell had laid the breakfast cloth and polished the silver by half
past six, when Miss Euphemia knocked briskly at the door where Pamela
and Dolly Trumbull were slumbering sweetly, and resolved that she would
request Oliver to permit Captain Yorke to come down and breakfast with
the family. "For," mused Miss Euphemia, "our obligations to that young