“What have we done?” asked Faith blankly.
“Done! You’d better ask! The talk is something terrible. I expect it’s ruined your father in this congregation. He’ll never be able to live it down, poor man! Everybody blames him for it, and that isn’t fair. But nothing is fair in this world. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
“What have we done?” asked Una again, despairingly. Faith said nothing, but her eyes flashed golden-brown scorn at Mary.
“Oh, don’t pretend innocence,” said Mary, witheringly. “Everybody knows what you have done.”
“I don’t,” interjected Jem Blythe indignantly. “Don’t let me catch you making Una cry, Mary Vance. What are you talking about?”
“I s’pose you don’t know, since you’re just back from up west,” said Mary, somewhat subdued. Jem could always manage her. “But everybody else knows, you’d better believe.”
“Knows what?”
“That Faith and Una stayed home from Sunday School last Sunday and cleaned house.”
“We didn’t,” cried Faith and Una, in passionate denial.
Mary looked haughtily at them.