“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.”

At this the elder sister, finding that she could do nothing with little Mary, escaped from the parlor, and running up stairs, made a report to her mother of what was going on below.

“Mercy!” exclaimed the lady, in painful surprise.

“She told him that you said you never wanted to look upon his face again,” said the little girl.

“She did!”

“Yes.  And she is telling him a great deal more.  I tried my best to make her stop, but couldn’t.”

“Rachel!  Go down and bring that child out of the parlor!” said Mrs. Fairview, to a servant.  “It is too bad!  I had no idea that the little witch knew anything about it.  So much for talking before children!”

“And so much for not being at home when you are,” remarked a sister of Mrs. Fairview, who happened to be present.

“So much for having an acquaintance who makes himself at home in your house, whether you want him or not.”

“No doubt you are both sufficiently well punished.”

“I have been, I know.”

The heavy jar of the street door was heard at this moment.

“He’s gone, I do believe!”

And so it proved.  What else little Mary said to him was never known, as the violent scolding she received when her mother got hold of her, sealed her lips on the subject, or drove all impressions relating thereto from her memory.

Mr. Bebee never called again.

THE FATAL ERROR.

“CLINTON!” said Margaret Hubert, with a look of supreme contempt.  Don’t speak of him to me, Lizzy.  His very name is an offence to my ears!” and the lady’s whole manner became disturbed.

“He will be at the ball to-night, of course, and will renew his attentions,” said the friend, in an earnest, yet quiet voice.  “Now, for all your expressions of dislike, I have thought that you were really far from being indifferent to Mr. Clinton, and affected a repugnance at variance with your true feelings.”