id 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 ma