“Well, I—­I sort of forgot about you, that’s a fact, in Agnes,—­for it’s her circus from the start; you and Amy,” giving his little chuckling laugh, “are only humble followers, pressed into service, you know, by the ringmaster.  The thing of it was, you hadn’t sand enough to stand up against Agnes.”

“And Tilly had,” responded Dora, in a mortified tone.

“Oh, Tilly!  Tilly’s a trump, always and every time.  She’s on the right side of things naturally.”

If Dora and Amy needed a still lower abyss of humiliation, they found it in this last sentence of Tom’s, which showed them plainly what poor creatures he thought they were “naturally” to Tilly.

Before many hours the story of “that little Smith girl” was known throughout the house, and mothers and fathers and guardians heard with amazement that so serious a little drama had been going on without their slightest knowledge until this climax.  One mother, however, Mrs. Robson, was more than amazed when she found what an influence Agnes had exerted over her daughter and niece.

“Don’t offer as excuse that you didn’t dare to tell me how things were going on for fear of offending Agnes Brendon,” she said indignantly.  “Didn’t Tilly Morris dare to tell her grandmother?”

Everywhere it was Tilly Morris,—­Tilly Morris, the kind, the brave, the honest!  Even Mrs. Brendon, who came at last to know the fact, in her alarm and irritation assailed her daughter one day in the presence of the Robsons with these words,—­

“Why couldn’t you have behaved amiably and sensibly, like the little Morris girl?  I don’t see where you learned such suspicious, calculating, worldly ways of judging people and things?”

And then it was that Agnes turned upon her mother and gave utterance to these bitter, brutal truths,—­

“I’ve learned them from the older people I’ve seen all my life,—­the people who come to our house.  They judge other people that they don’t know anything about in just such calculating ways.  They are always talking with you about this one or that one’s social position, and they never make new acquaintances without finding out what set they belong to; and I was never allowed from a little girl to make acquaintances with any children whose mothers were not in the right set; and amiability and goodness had nothing to do with it,—­nothing, nothing, nothing!”

THE EGG-BOY.

“Marge, Marge, here is the egg-boy!”

Marge dropped her book and ran to join her sister Elsie, who by this time was on the back piazza talking to a boy who had just driven up in a farm-wagon.

“We want two dozen more,—­all nice big ones, and by to-morrow, for it is only three days before Easter, and they must be boiled and colored to be ready in season.”

The boy stared.  “Colored?” he repeated in a puzzled, questioning tone.

“Yes,” answered Elsie, “colored.  Don’t you color eggs for Easter?”