determined souls in conspiracy can accomplish much
in a few moments. The first move was planned in
detail before that gong sounded, and the two boys
raced to the house, and Lily followed, carrying a toad-
stool, which she had hurriedly caught up from the
lawn for her object of nature to be taken into class.

It was a poisonous toadstool, and Lily was quite
a heroine in the class. That fact doubtless gave her
a more dauntless air when, after school, the two
boys caught up with her walking gracefully down
the road, flirting her skirts and now and then giving
her head a toss, which made her fluff of hair fly into
a golden foam under her daisy-trimmed straw hat.

"To-night," Johnny whispered, as he sped past.

"At half past nine, between your house and the
Simmonses'," replied Lily, without even looking at
him. She was a past-mistress of dissimulation.

Lily's mother had guests at dinner that night,
and the guests remarked sometimes, within the little
girl's hearing, what a darling she was.

"She never gives me a second's anxiety," Lily's
mother whispered to a lady beside her. "You can-
not imagine what a perfectly good, dependable child
she is."