"What am I naughty about, my little sis?" said Mr. Bebee.
"O, because you are a naughty man! You made my mother sick, so you did! And mother says she never wants to look in your face again. You are a naughty man!"
"Mary! Mary! Hush! hush!" exclaimed the elder sister, trying to stop the child.
"Made your mother sick?" said Mr. Bebee. "How did I do that?"
"Why, you shut her up in that little room there, all in the cold, when you were here and staid so long, one day. And it made her sick—so it did."
"Shut her up in that room! what does the child mean?" said Mr. Bebee, speaking to the elder sister.
"Mary! Mary! I'm ashamed of you. Come away!" was the only response made to this.
Mr. Bebee was puzzled. He asked himself as to the meaning of this strange language. All at once, he remembered that after he had been sitting in the parlor for an hour, on the occasion referred to, some one had come out of the little room referred to by the child, and swept past him almost as quick as a flash. But it had never once occurred to him that this was the lady he had called to visit, who, according to the servant, was not at home.
"I didn't shut your mother up in that room, Mary," said he, to the child.
"O, but you did. And she got cold, and almost died."