The door into the adjoining room creaked.  Beth blushed scarlet, and dropped the bundle into the trunk.  Then as no one came, she threw the other articles pell-mell on top of the bundle, and scampered guiltily to the other end of the room.  Not an instant too soon to escape immediate detection, for Mrs. Davenport reentered the room, followed by a girl of thirteen.  This was Marian, Beth’s sister.  The two girls were totally unlike both in looks and in disposition.  Marian was a tall blonde, and slight for her age.  She had quiet, gentle ways.

“Mother, here’s my red dress on the floor,” she said, picking it up near the trunk.

“Beth, what have you been doing?”

Beth kept her blushing, telltale face turned from her mother, and did not answer.  Without another word, Mrs. Davenport went to the trunk, and began smoothing things out.

“I declare, there’s something alive in here,” and she drew out a poor, half smothered kitten.

“I think you might let her go in the trunk,” cried Beth, aggrieved.

“Child, it would kill the poor kitty.  Marian, you take it back to the chambermaid.”  Marian left the room with it, and Beth began to pout, whereupon Mrs. Davenport said: 

“Beth, you are so set upon having your own way, I hardly know what to do with you.”

Immediately Beth’s pouting gave place to a mischievous smile.  “You’d better call in a policeman, and have me taken away.”

Mrs. Davenport smiled too.  “So my little girl remembers the policeman, does she?  I was at my wits’ end to know how to manage you when I thought of him.  Even as a little bit of a thing, you would laugh instead of cry, if I punished you with a whipping.”

“Well, I was afraid of the policeman, anyway.  I thought you really meant it when you said I was a naughty child, and not your nice Beth, and that the policeman would take the naughty child away.”

“It worked like magic,” said Mrs. Davenport.  “You stopped crying almost immediately, and held out towards me a red dress of which you were very proud, and cried, ’I’m your Beth.  Don’t you know my pretty red dress?  Don’t you see my curls?’” She sat down, having finished straightening out the trunk, and Beth crept up into her mother’s lap.

“Beth, do you remember one night when you were ready for bed in your little canton-flannel night-drawers, that you lost your temper over some trifling matter?  You danced up and down, yelling, ’I won’t.  I won’t.’  I could hardly keep from laughing.  My young spitfire looked very funny capering around and around, her long curls rumpled about her determined, flushed face, and her feet not still an instant in her flapping night-drawers.  Many and many a time you escaped punishment, Beth, because you were so very comical even in your naughtiness.”

“I remember that night well,” answered Beth.  “You said, ’There, that bad girl has come back.  Even though it’s night, she’ll have to go.’”