“Oh, nonsense!” cried Maria.  “You aren’t afraid—­we two together—­and it’s bright moonlight, as bright as day.”

“Yes, I know it is,” replied Lily, gazing out at the silver light which flooded everything, but she still hesitated.  A light in the house behind gave her a background of light.  She was a beautiful girl, prettier than Maria, taller, and with a timid, pliant grace.  Her brown hair tossed softly over her big, brown eyes, which were surmounted by strongly curved eyebrows, her nose was small, and her mouth, and she had a fascinating little way of holding her lips slightly parted, as if ready for a loving word or a kiss.  Everybody said that Lily Merrill had a beautiful disposition, albeit some claimed that she lacked force.  Maria dominated her, although she did not herself know it.  Lily continued to hesitate with her beautiful, startled brown eyes on Maria’s face.

“Aren’t you afraid?” she said.

“Afraid?  No.  What should I be afraid of?  Why, it’s bright moonlight!  I would just as soon go at night as in the daytime when the moon is bright.”

“That is an awful man who lives at the Ramseys’!”

“Nonsense!  I guess if he tried to bother us, Mrs. Ramsey would take care of him,” said Maria.  “Come along, Lily.  I would ask Uncle Henry, but it is the night when he takes his bath, and he comes home tired.”

“Well, I’ll go if mother will let me,” said Lily.

Then Lily called to her mother, who came to the sitting-room door in response.

“Mother,” said Lily, “Maria wants me to go over to the Ramseys’, those on the other side of the river, after supper, and carry these things to Jessy.”

“Aren’t you afraid?” asked Lily’s mother, as Lily herself had done.  She was a faded but still pretty woman who had looked like her daughter in her youth.  She was a widow with some property, enough for her Lily and herself to live on in comfort.

“Why, it’s bright moonlight, Mrs. Merrill,” said Maria, “and the Ramseys live just the other side of the river.”

“Well, if Lily isn’t afraid, I don’t care,” said Mrs. Merrill.  She had an ulterior motive for her consent, of which neither of the two girls suspected her.  She was smartly dressed, and her hair was carefully crimped, and she had, as always in the evening, hopes that a certain widower, the resident physician of Amity, Dr. Ellridge, might call.  He had noticed her several times at church suppers, and once had walked home with her from an evening meeting.  Lily never dreamed that her mother had aspirations towards a second husband.  Her father had been dead ten years; the possibility of any one in his place had never occurred to her; then, too, she looked upon her mother as entirely too old for thoughts of that kind.  But Mrs. Merrill had her own views, which she kept concealed behind her pretty, placid exterior.  She always welcomed the opportunity of being left alone of an evening,