Presently, Eunice spoke in her little, deprecating voice, which had a slight squeak.

“Did you speak to your uncle Henry about going with you this evening?” she asked.

“No, I didn’t,” admitted Maria, reddening, “but I knew he would be willing.”

“I suppose he will be,” said Eunice.  “But he does get home awful tuckered out Saturday nights, and he always takes his bath Saturday nights, too.”

Eunice looked out of the window with a slight frown.  She adored her husband, and the thought of that long walk for him on his weary Saturday evening, and the possible foregoing of his bath, troubled her.

“I don’t believe George Ramsey liked it,” she whispered, after a little.

“I can’t help it if he didn’t,” replied Maria.  “I can’t go with him, Aunt Eunice.”

As they jolted along, Maria made up her mind that she would not ask her uncle to go with her at all; that she would slip out unknown to Aunt Maria and ask the girl who lived in the house on the other side, Lily Merrill, to go with her.  She thought that two girls need not be afraid, and she could start early.

As she parted from her aunt Eunice at the door of the house, after they had left the car (Eunice’s door was on the side where the Ramseys lived, and Maria’s on the Merrill side), she told her of her resolution.

“Don’t say anything to Uncle Henry about going with me,” said she.

“Why, what are you going to do?”

“I’ll get Lily Merrill.  I know she won’t mind.”

Maria and Lily Merrill had been together frequently since Maria had come to Amity, and Eunice accounted them as intimate.  She looked hesitatingly a second at her niece, then she said, with an evident air of relief: 

“Well, I don’t know but you can.  It’s bright moonlight, and it’s late in the season for tramps.  I don’t see why you two girls can’t go together, if you start early.”

“We’ll start right after supper,” said Maria.

“I would,” said Eunice, still with an air of relief.

Maria took her aunt’s fish-net bag, as well as her own parcels, and carried them around to her aunt Maria’s side of the house, and deposited them on the door-step.  There was a light in the kitchen, and she could see her aunt Maria’s shadow moving behind the curtain, preparing supper.  Then she ran across the yard, over the frozen furrows of a last year’s garden, and knocked at the side-door of the Merrill house.

Lily herself opened the door, and gave a little, loving cry of surprise.  “Why, is it you, dear?” she said.

“Yes.  I want to know if you can go over the river with me to-night on an errand?”

“Over the river?  Where?”

“Oh, only to Jessy Ramsey’s.  Aunt Eunice and I have been to Westbridge and bought these things for her, and I want to carry them to her to-night.  I thought maybe you would go with me.”

Lily hesitated.  “It’s a pretty lonesome walk,” said she, “and there are an awful set of people on the other side of the river.”