I got dreadfully worried then and begged her to go to Lorraine at once, for I saw things were even more terrible than I had thought.  But Maria said:  “Certainly not!  I must consult with father and mother first.  This is something that affects us all.  After I have seen them I will go to Lorraine’s.”  Then she told me not to worry about it, and not to speak of it to any one else.  I didn’t, either, except to Billy and Aunt Elizabeth; and when I told Aunt Elizabeth the man’s name I thought she would go up into the air like one of Billy’s skyrockets.  But that part does not belong here, and I’m afraid if I stop to talk about it I’ll forget about Billy and the letter.

After luncheon Maria put her hat on and went straight to our house to see mother, and I went back to school.  When I got home I asked, the first thing, if Billy had delivered the letter from Harry Goward, and for the next fifteen minutes you would have thought every one in our house had gone crazy.  That wretched boy had not delivered it at all!  They had not even seen him, and they didn’t know anything about the letter.  After they had let me get enough breath to tell just how I had met Harry and exactly what he had said and done, mother rushed off to telephone to father, and Aunt Elizabeth came down-stairs with a wild, eager face, and Grandma Evarts actually shook me when she found I didn’t even know whom the letter was for.  I hadn’t looked, because I had been so excited.  Finally, after everybody had talked at once for a while.  Grandma Evans told me mamma had said Billy could go fishing that afternoon, because the weather was so hot and she thought he looked pale and overworked.  The idea of Billy Talbert being overworked!  I could have told mamma something about that.

Well, I saw through the whole thing then.  Billy hadn’t told me, for fear I would want to go along; so he had sneaked off with Sidney Tracy, and if he hadn’t forgotten all about the letter he had made up his mind it would do as well to deliver it when he came home.  That’s the way Billy’s mind works—­like Tom Price’s stop-watch.  It goes up to a certain instant and then it stops short.  You’d better believe I was angry.  And it didn’t make it any easier for me to remember that while I was having this dreadful time at home, and being reproached by everybody.  Billy and Sidney Tracy were sitting comfortably under the willows on the edge of the river pulling little minnows out of the water.  I knew exactly where they would be—­I’d been there with Billy often enough.  Just as I thought of that I looked at poor Peggy, sitting in her wrapper in papa’s big easy-chair, leaning against a pillow Grandma Evarts had put behind her back, and trying to be calm.  She looked so pale and worn and worried and sick that I made up my mind I’d follow those boys to the river and get that letter and bring it home to Peggy—­for, of course, I was sure it was for her.  I wish you could have seen her face when I said I’d do it, and the way she jumped up from the chair and then blushed and sank back and tried to look as if it didn’t matter—­with her eyes shining all the time with excitement and hope.