"Now my Christina is a good child in the grain,"
said the lady, "but she is full of mischief. I never
can tell what Christina will do next."

"I can always tell," said Lily's mother, in a voice
of maternal triumph.

"Now only the other night, when I thought
Christina was in bed, that absurd child got up and
dressed and ran over to see her aunt Bella. Tom
came home with her, and of course there was nothing
very bad about it. Christina was very bright; she
said, 'Mother, you never told me I must not get up
and go to see Aunt Bella,' which was, of course,
true. I could not gainsay that."

"I cannot," said Lily's mother, "imagine my
Lily's doing such a thing."

If Lily had heard that last speech of her mother's,
whom she dearly loved, she might have wavered.
That pathetic trust in herself might have caused her
to justify it. But she had finished her dinner and
had been excused, and was undressing for bed, with
the firm determination to rise betimes and dress
and join Johnny Trumbull and Arnold Carruth.
Johnny had the easiest time of them all. He simply
had to bid his aunt Janet good night and have the
watch wound, and take a fleeting glimpse of his
mother at her desk and his father in his office, and