Lucy’s clear eyes met hers inquiringly.  To her uneasy conscience they seemed to accuse her and to demand the admission of her fault.  Her cheeks grew crimson; and, as a person in a burning building ventures a perilous leap in the hope of escape, so Annie, finding her present position intolerable, stammered out the truth.

“I only came to bring back something.  Don’t be vexed, will you, at what I’m going to tell you?  I took that red silk dress home with me; but here it is, and I’m sorry, Lucy,—­indeed I am!”

A variety of expressions flitted across Lucy’s face as she listened.  Incredulity, surprise, and indignation were depicted there.  Annie had stated the case as mildly as possible, but Lucy understood.  After the first surprise, however, she began to comprehend dimly that it must have required a good deal of moral courage thus openly to bring back the little dress.  She was conscious of a new respect for Annie, who stood there so abashed.  For a few moments there was an awkward pause; then she managed to say: 

“Oh, that is all right!  Of course I should have been vexed if you had not brought it back, because I should have missed it as soon as I opened the box.  I was mean about it, anyway.  I might have let you take it to try on Clementina.  Here, I’ll give it to you now, to make up for being stingy.”

Annie shook her head, and refused to take the once coveted gift from her companion’s outstretched hand.

“Then I’ll lend it to you for ever and ever,” continued Lucy, impulsively.

“No, I don’t want it now,” answered Annie.  “Good-bye!”

“Will you go to walk with me to-morrow after Sunday-school?” urged Lucy, as she followed her to the door.

“P’rhaps!” replied her little friend, hastening away.

The inquiry brought her a feeling of relief, however.  Lucy evidently had no thought of “cutting” her acquaintance.  The sense of having done right made her heart light and happy as she ran home.  The experience had taught her that one must learn to see many pretty things without wishing to possess them; and also that small acts of disobedience and a habit of meddling may lead further than one at first intends.

Annie became a lovely woman, a devoted daughter, a most self-sacrificing character, and one scrupulously exact in her dealings with others; but she never forgot “that red silk frock.”

“A LESSON WITH A SEQUEL.”

“How strange that any one should be so superstitious!” said Emily Mahon.  Rosemary Beckett had been telling a group of girls of the ridiculous practices of an old negro woman employed by her mother as a laundress.

“People must be very ignorant to believe such things,” declared Anna Shaw, disdainfully.

“Yet,” observed Miss Graham, closing the new magazine which she had been looking over, “it is surprising how many persons, who ought to know better, are addicted to certain superstitions, and cannot be made to see that it is not only foolish but wrong to yield to them.”