irls a holiday to take them to a neighboring
town; there was to be a concert, I remember, and some other treats; and
the scholars were, as you would say, 'perfectly wild to go,'" and she
smiled indulgently at her rapt audience. "Well, I was not going."

"Oh Miss Salisbury!" exclaimed Amy Garrett in sorrow, as if the
disappointment were not forty years in the background.

"No. I decided it was not best for me to take the money, although my
father had written me that I could, when the holiday had been planned
some time before. And besides, I thought I could do some extra studying
ahead while the girls were away. Understand, I didn't really think of
doing wrong then; although afterward I did the wrong thing."

"_Sister!_" reproved Miss Anstice. She could not sit still now, but got
out of her stone chair, and paced up and down.

"No; I did not dream that in a little while after the party had started,
I should be so sorely tempted, and the idea would enter my head to do
the wrong thing. But so it was. I was studying, I remember, my
philosophy lesson for some days ahead, when suddenly, as plainly as if
letters of light were written down the page, it flashed upon my mind,
'Why don't I go home to-day? I can get back to-night, and no one will
know it; at least, not until I am back again, and no harm done.' And
without waiting to think it out, I clapped to my book, tossed it on the
table, and ran to get my poor little purse out of the bureau drawer."

The girls, in their eagerness not to lose a word, crowded close to Miss
Salisbury's knees, forgetting that she wasn't a girl with them.

"I had quite enough money, I could see, to take me home and back on the
cars, and by the stage."

"The stage?" repeated Alexia faintly.

"Yes; you must remember that this time of which I am telling you was
many, many years back. Besides, in some country places, it is still the
only mode of conveyance used."

Polly Pepper drew a long breath. Dear old Badgertown, and Mr. Tisbett's
stage. She could see it now, as it looked when the Five Little Peppers
would run to the windows of the little brown house to watch it go
lumbering by, and to hear the old stage-driver crack his whip in
greeting!

"The housekeeper had a day off, to go to her daughter's, so that helped
my plan along," Miss Salisbury was saying. "Well would it have been for
me if the conditions had been less easy. But I must hasten. I have told
you that I did not pause to think; tha