"'I did been to your room, Miss Mary,' said she. She didn't tell about bringing a bunch of violets, but that was what she brought. She called them 'vi'lets,' when she gave them to Miss Pike to put in water for me. Why, it made me feel so cruel and unkind and ashamed to smell those 'vi'lets.' She bought them herself, Lena did. Oh, she never knew what I'd said about her stealing those rings for her little sister!
"There, that's pretty near the end. Oh, no, I forgot about Lijar. He hadn't stolen a watch, or touched one. He hadn't stolen anything. And he hadn't been put in the lock-up, either. Perhaps somebody had been put in the lock-up, but it wasn't Lijar. Lijar had broken his leg, and that was all that ailed him.
"Miss Pike went to his house to see him, and I went with her. It was a queer old house full of children,—oh, ever so many children. Lijar was in awful pain, so Miss Pike said, but he didn't groan any, and of course he couldn't possibly look pale, so you wouldn't have known how much he was in pain.
"He thanked us for the oranges, and his wife said he was always good and kind, and then she put her apron to her eyes and cried, and told Miss Pike she'd rather be hurt herself than to have her 'old man' hurt. Then I felt cruel and unkind again, to think how I'd called him horrid, when he wasn't horrid at all, and it was another man that stole.
"There, grandma, I wouldn't tell this story to anybody but you. But it's the very last time I'll talk so about people, unless I know it's certainly true. If Miss Pike didn't say, 'I hope this will be a lesson to you, little Mary,' it will be a lesson all the same, I just about know.
"And now, grandma, if you can spare me, I must go out and talk with mamma and Miss Pike about Ethel's party. Yes'm, it will be Ethel's birthday to-morrow, the 20th of March, and ever since we got home she has been wanting a party. Mamma wasn't going to let her have one. She said it would be too much trouble, for her friends are such little bits of things that their mammas would have to come, too, to keep them in order; and then I said, 'Oh, mamma, if you are willing, you could let me ask my little girls to a party, the little girls of my age! Ethel likes them just as well as her little girls, and she'd be ever so pleased; and she does want a party so much!'
"Mamma thought it was a queer idea, but I'm pretty sure she'll consent. It isn't for my sake, you know, it's for Ethel, and we can call it Ethel's kettledrum."