“Your aunt went, didn’t she?” said Lily, entering, and shaking the flakes of snow from her skirts.

“Yes.”

“I don’t see why mother wouldn’t go.  Mother never goes out anywhere, and she isn’t nearly as old as your aunts.”

Lily and Maria seated themselves in the sitting-room before the stove.  Lily looked at Maria, and a faint red overspread her cheeks.  She began to speak, then she hesitated, and evidently said something which she had not intended.

“How pretty that is!” she said, pointing to a great oleander-tree in flower, which was Aunt Maria’s pride.

“Yes, I think it is pretty.”

“Lovely.  The very prettiest one I ever saw.”  Lily hesitated again, but at last she began to speak, with the red on her cheeks brighter and her eyes turned away from Maria.  “I wanted to tell you something, Maria,” said she.

“Well?” said Maria.  Her own face was quite pale and motionless.  She was doing some fancy-work, embroidering a centre-piece, and she continued to take careful stitches.

“I know you thought I was awful, doing the way I did last night,” said Lily, in her sweet murmur.  She drooped her head, and the flush on her oval cheeks was like the flush on a wild rose.  Lily wore a green house-dress, which set her off as the leaves and stem set off a flower.  It was of some soft material which clung about her and displayed her tender curves.  She wore at her throat an old cameo brooch which had belonged to her grandmother, and which had upon its onyx background an ivory head as graceful as her own.  Maria, beside Lily, although she herself was very pretty, looked ordinary in her flannel blouse and black skirt, which was her school costume.

Maria continued taking careful stitches in the petals of a daisy which she was embroidering.  “I think we have talked enough about it,” she said.

“But I want to tell you something.”

“Why don’t you tell it, then?”

“I know you thought I did something awful, running across the yard and coming here in the night the way I did, and showing you that I—­I, well, that I minded George Ramsey’s coming home with you; but—­look here, Maria, I—­had a little reason.”

Maria paled perceptibly, but she kept on steadily with her work.

Lily flushed more deeply.  “George Ramsey has been home with me from evening meeting quite a number of times,” she said.

“Has he?” said Maria.

“Yes.  Of course we were walking the same way.  He may not really have meant to see me home.”  There was a sort of innate honesty in Lily which always led her to retrieve the lapses from the strict truth when in her favor.  “Maybe he didn’t really mean to see me home, and sometimes he didn’t offer me his arm,” she added, with a childlike wistfulness, as if she desired Maria to reassure her.

“I dare say he meant to see you home,” said Maria, rather shortly.

“I am not quite sure,” said Lily.  “But he did walk home with me quite a number of times, first and last, and you know we used to go to the same school, and a number of times then, when we were a good deal younger, he really did see me home, and—­he kissed me good-night then.  Of course he hasn’t done that lately, because we were older.”