"Pooh! I don't want to hear about your old punctuality," said Lily. "Everybody just bothers me 'most to death about being punctual. Tom has been making a fuss about it just now."
"But it is a story,—one of Maggie's stories," said Belle, who thought it quite incredible that any one should decline an opportunity of hearing one of those interesting and valuable narratives.
"Let's hear it then," said Lily.
"It is not a story of my own making up," said Maggie, with the solemnity which befitted a teacher of moral lessons; "but it is very interesting, and may do some good, if people choose to let it. But as there are 'none so deaf as those who won't hear,' so I suppose there are none so hard to teach as those who won't be taught."
"But what is the story?" asked Belle.
"The story is this," answered Maggie. "Once thirteen ladies went to a meeting, or ought to go to a meeting. Well, twelve of them came at the right time to the house of a very wise old Quaker lady, where the meeting was; but the thirteenth lady did not come for a quarter of an hour after she ought to. So the other ladies were as tired as they could be, 'cause they couldn't begin to do what they had to do without her—but I would have if I'd been there—and some of them yawned—which wasn't polite for them to do, but they could hardly help it—and some went to sleep, and some had headaches, and one who was sitting in a breeze from the window, where she didn't like to sit, took cold, and had a sore throat and a toothache, and she had to go and have her tooth out; which was all the fault of the unpunctual lady, and I should think she'd be very much ashamed of herself."
"So should I," said Mabel, as Maggie paused to take breath.
"What's the rest of the story?" asked Bessie, impatient of delay in such a thrilling tale.
"Well, when she came in," continued Maggie, giving point to her story by the look she fixed upon Lily,—"when she came in, after doing such a lot of mischief, she didn't seem to think it was any great harm after all; but she just said, 'Ladies, I am sorry I kept you waiting, but it is only a quarter of an hour.' Then the wise old Quaker lady stood up and looked very severe at her, and she said, 'Friend, thee'—thee is the way Quakers say you—'Friend, thee has wasted three hours of time that did not belong to thee. Here are twelve of us, and a quarter of an hour for each makes three hours, and you—thee, I mean—had no right to do it, and thee ought to be ashamed of yourself.' And the lady was ashamed of herself, 'cause it made her feel horridly to be talked to that way before so many people; and she never did so again, which was a great blessing to every one who knew her, because she made herself a great inconvenience."