"I don't see that I can tell her anything but the truth."
"Not the whole truth?"
"What else could I tell her?"
"My! I wouldn't be in your shoes for something! She'll be so furious, she'll fall upon you,—you or anybody who is nearest,—and chew you into mince-meat! Oh, Hope, don't tell her! Tell her—tell her—oh, I have it—tell her that you spoke to Bessie about the invitation, and that there was none sent because Bessie is offended with her for some reason,—that you can't tell her what it is, but that she must go to Bessie herself for the reason. There! there you are all fixed up, and with the great high-minded muss shoved off on to the Armitage shoulders, where it ought to be. Houp la! I'd dance a jig if I were out of the carriage!"
"But I—I sha'n't shove it off like that, Katy dear. I shall tell Dorothea everything,—it is the only way. I shall tell her as gently as I can, but I shall tell her. If I turn it off in the way you suggest, it will make more trouble. She'll go to Bessie the minute she gets back and say something disagreeable to her, or she'll treat her in an angry disagreeable manner, and just as like as not say something,—something purposely impertinent to irritate Bessie,—for she won't stop at anything then."
"But do you think it will be any better—do you think she'll be any less angry if you tell her that it is Mrs. Armitage who is at the bottom of the business?"
"Yes, I do; I think it will be a great deal better. She'll be angry,—she may be furious, as you say; but I shall tell her just how Bessie felt about not sending the note,—how she cried over it, and how Mrs. Armitage felt; and Dorothea has too much sense not to see herself, after the first burst of temper, that the whole thing has been made too serious a matter for her to quarrel about it in a little petty way. And then—then I think, after she gets over the anger, that she is going to be helped by the whole experience, going to see what she has never seen before,—that she is all in the wrong in her way of doing and saying the things that she does, and that she will be left out of everything if she doesn't do differently; and nothing—no, nothing but something like this—would ever show her how she has been hurting herself."
"Well, you may be right, Hope; but I believe this spoilt baby will scream and kick and bang her head in some sort of tantrum way, and then she'll pack up her clothes and rush off to Boston, shaking the wicked dirty dust of New York from her feet, and calling us all a lot of primmy old maids, or something worse."
Hope laughed a little, but she was more than a little anxious and troubled; for, spite of her brave stand, she did have a very decided dread of applying that heroic treatment of the whole truth to Dorothea; and her dread by no means diminished as she went down the long corridor and saw at the end of it Dorothea's room-door standing open, and within the room Dorothea herself, humming a gay waltz as she shook out the folds of the yellow gown; and "Oh," groaned Hope, "she's getting it ready for the party; she thinks everything is all right, and she's so sure she's going. Oh, dear!"
And then it was, when Hope's heart was quaking with fear and pity, that Dorothea glanced up from the yellow gown and cried out joyfully,—