"Yes, ma'am," Nannie quavered.
"Turn round."
They turned. Nannie began to cry. Blair twisted a button on his coat with a grip that made his fingers white.
"Come into my room."
The children gasped with dismay. Mrs. Maitland's bedroom was a nightmare of a place to them both. It was generally dark, for the lower halves of the inside shutters were apt to be closed; but, worse than that, the glimmering glass doors of the bookcases that lined the walls held a suggestion of mystery that was curiously terrifying. Whenever they entered the room, the brother and sister always kept a frightened eye on those doors. This dull winter morning, when they came quaking along behind their mother into this grim place, it was still in the squalor of morning confusion. Later, Harris would open the shutters and tidy things up; he would dust the painted pine bureau and Blair's photographs and the slender green bottle of German cologne on which the red ribbons of the calendar were beginning to fade; now everything was dark and bleak and covered with dust. Mrs. Maitland sat down; the culprits stood hand in hand in front of her.
"Blair, don't you know it's wrong to take what doesn't belong to you?"
"I took it," said the 'fraid-cat, faintly; she moved in front of her brother as though to protect him.
"Blair told you to," his mother said.
"Yes," Blair blurted out, "it was me told her to."
"People that take things that don't belong to them go to hell," Mrs.
Maitland said; "haven't you learned that in Sunday-school?"