“Good-evening, Mr. Ramsey,” responded Maria.  She felt Lily’s arm tremble in hers.  George walked along with them.  “I have been to carry the presents which I bought with your money,” said Maria.

“Good heavens!  You don’t mean that you two girls have been all alone up there?” said George.

“Why, yes,” said Maria.  “Why not?”

“Weren’t you afraid?”

“Maria isn’t afraid of anything,” Lily’s sweet, little, tremulous voice piped on the other side.

George was walking next Maria.  There was a slight and very gentle accusation in the voice.

“It wasn’t safe,” said George, soberly, “and I should have been glad to go with you.”

Maria laughed.  “Well, here we are, safe and sound,” she said.  “I didn’t see anything to be much afraid of.”

“All the same, they are an awful set there,” said George.  They had reached Maria’s door, and he added, “Suppose you walk along with me, Miss Edgham, and I will see Lily home.”  George had been to school with Lily, and had always called her by her first name.

Maria again felt that little tremor of Lily’s arm in hers, and did not understand it.  “All right,” she said.

The three walked to Lily’s door, and had said good-night, when Lily, who was, after all, the daughter of her mother, although her little artifices were few and innocent, had an inspiration.  She discovered that she had lost her handkerchief.

“I think I took it out when we reached your gate, Mr. Ramsey,” she said, timidly, for she felt guilty.

It was quite true that the handkerchief was not in her muff, in which she had carried it, but there was a pocket in her coat which she did not investigate.

They turned back, looking along the frozen ground.

“Never mind,” Lily said, cheerfully, when they had reached the Ramsey gate and returned to the Edgham’s, and the handkerchief was not forthcoming, “it was an old one, anyway.  Good-night.”

She knew quite well that George Edgham would do what he did—­walk home with her the few steps between her house and Maria’s, and that Maria would not hesitate to say good-night and enter her own door.

“I guess I had better go right in,” said Maria.  “Aunt Maria has a cold, and she may worry and be staying up.”

Lily was entirely happy at walking those few steps with George Ramsey.  He had pulled her little hand through his arm in a school-boy sort of fashion.  He left her at the door with a friendly good-night, but she had got what she wanted.  He had not gone those few steps alone with Maria.  Lily loved Maria, but she did not want George Ramsey to love her.

When Lily entered the house, to her great astonishment she found Dr. Ellridge there.  He was seated beside her mother, who was lying on the sofa.

“Why, mother, what is it—­are you sick?” Lily cried, anxiously, while the doctor looked with admiration at her face, glowing with the cold.