“Fannie, you said yourself that you couldn’t bear to keep a thing back just for fear of marks or punishment,” said Bell.
“Well, I didn’t say I’d never smile again, did I? I’m awfully sorry we went to the station. It was taking a mean advantage of Miss Blake when she asked us to wait for her at the milliner’s. It was tricky, and I don’t defend it, but I do say that, as we did let the time for talking go by, there’s no use raking the matter up now.”
“Why don’t you tell, Bell, if Fannie wont?” asked Katie, who was writing some last pages in her diary, and so had not been an attentive listener.
“What a sneaky idea!” said Bell, rousing herself from the gloom which had settled upon her. “I can’t tell without involving Fannie, and I won’t be such a sneak as to do that.”
“Now, my little children,” said Lily, “let me give you a leaf out of my experience. The first year I was here I stole a pie! I did; I stole a pie, I did. It doesn’t seem like a crime to me now; it seems rather funny; but I used to lie awake nights thinking of it then. It happened upon this wise, my little dears. One of the girls was going to give a ‘rampage’—that is, a night-gown party after bed-time. Mrs. Abbott has put a stop to that species of entertainment, and I don’t know as I am sorry, for we used to take terrific colds flying about in our fairy-like attire. We always indulged in some form of refreshment, generally crackers and pea-nuts. The latter article of diet, I may remark in passing, was apt to produce pallor the next morning. The night in question—don’t I sound like a magazine article?—we found ourselves minus even the sober cracker and the festive pea-nut, and one of the girls dared me to steal down the back stairs and hook—that is what she called it; I keep nothing back—hook a pie. She didn’t say ‘hook, hook, a pie,’ but I have noticed that authors always express things that way, so I repeated the word. Well, to resume; in my callow youth I held that to dare meant to do, so I did. I hied me to the dark and grewsome kitchen, crept stealthily to the pantry, and crawled through a window that communicated with the dining-room pantry. Ah, the recollection paralyzes me! ‘Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,’ as the pie up the dark stairs I carried. Let me hasten to the end before emotion overcomes me. At the top of the stairs were a group of white-clad ghosts, semi-distinct in the faint light that a clouded moon sent through the skylight. Some of the ghosts giggled, some said, ‘Sh, sh,’ and the phantom sounds disturbed Miss Blake, I think, for a door opened far around the corner and a glimmer of light approached. The ghosts vanished and sheltered themselves in various beds, where their slumbers became intense. I could not fly to a bed, because I dared not take another step forward, for the stately form, with a dim night-light, had turned the corner.
“I was near the top of the stairs when the distant ray first appeared. I reached the stolen treasure up to the girls and flew swiftly down-stairs again and through the school-room to the front hall—I knew every body was in bed—and up the front stairs to my room, which was over in the new part. As a cruel fate decreed, the girls were in too great a panic to secure the pie I handed up to them, and left it on the floor.
“My beloved hearers, cease these frivolous howls of laughter. The matter is serious. The pie was pumpkin, and Miss Blake stepped in it!”
Lily’s listeners were shrieking with laughter over her droll recital, but she preserved a preternaturally solemn expression, which still more excited their mirth.
“Girls,” said she at last, “I intended this for a preachment, and how am I to give you the moral unless you refrain from this untimely mirth?”
“O, Lily, don’t look so funny!” gasped Katie, throwing herself on the bed and holding her sides.