With a crimson face and her heart beating loudly, the little girl advanced upon the treacherous ice. She had just gone beyond the edge of the thick part, when a crack and a shriek rang upon the air, and she felt herself going down. It was all the work of an instant, like a flash, though neither remembered exactly how it happened. Mary caught the clothes of the sinking child, and drew her out, dripping, shivering, and pale with fright, upon the thick ice. There they looked at each other an instant, and then began to sob with nervous excitement.
Lillie was so touched and awed by the emotion of her usually insensible companion, that she had not the heart to cry out against her for tempting her to her death, as had been her first impulse. So, in that deplorable plight, with the dripping water freezing about her, she hastened home.
She was too much subdued to heed Jennie’s “I told you so,” and “You might have known,” but submitted to Mrs. Hill’s rather rough usage in meekness, obeying her sentence of going to bed and taking a hot drink, in silence.
And there she lay in solitude, weeping over her sin, resolving to do better in the future, starting up with a great thrill of terror when the thought that she might even then have been in God’s presence with the unrepented sin on her soul, came into her mind.
“I will tell Miss Lane just as soon as she comes home,” she said to herself again and again, and as the night came on, she sat listening eagerly for the light steps of the teacher. Jennie came creeping in with a penitent face, after a while, to show her completed drawing, and to tell her, shyly but earnestly, how sorry she was for her share in the afternoon’s disaster.
“Papa will punish me, I suppose,” remarked Lillie, at last, when there was a pause. “But I think I am cured of going with Mary Noel any more. I wonder if he will be very angry!” And the old dread of reproaches came upon her with such force, that she was about to utter an entreaty to Jennie for silence concerning the events of the afternoon, when her better soul came to her again, and she resolved to bear whatever might be given her in patience.
Presently, as she lay there alone, listening for sounds in the large, still house, she heard the joyful outcry that welcomed her papa, and a few seconds after, the light, tripping step of Miss Lane sounded near the door. Pretty soon, she was heard descending, and then the buzzing of voices, as the parlor door was opened, came confusedly to her ear.
A moment more and the sound was shut out from her, and Sallie came up with a tray, and her nice tea arranged upon it—she saw at a glance—by Miss Lane’s own hands.
But Lillie was almost too sad and depressed to eat. Her heart was very full of tears by this time, as she thought that her own fault had shut her out from the light and warmth and pleasure down stairs. She heard the piano soon, and voices of happy laughter reached her faintly, borne through the long empty halls and quiet rooms up stairs. But these sounds of mirth, instead of enlivening her, only made her sadder.
The great tears ran down her cheeks as she thought how little she was missed, and wondered if her papa would come to say “good night” to her. The moonlight began to shine in at her window. She got up and looked out at her mamma’s grave, and wept again in her loneliness and gloom. The door opened softly, and turning round quickly, she saw her papa standing grave and sorrowful before her.