How earnestly they are talking! I wonder what
it's about? What a tender look on his face turned full toward her
downcast eyes! O, the _hypocrite_! They are both hypocrites; we are
all hypocrites! On their way to that horrid afternoon Lenten service!
It's a whole square out of the way to come by this house! She did it on
purpose; I know it, I know it! She just wanted me to see her with him!
She's the meanest girl in this town! I always disliked her, and now I
fairly despise the very ground she walks on--when she's walking it with
him! She's coming to spend all of Tuesday morning with me; won't I be
gracious though! I'll kiss her three or four times, instead of the
regulation-twice! I _can_ be hypocritical, and _sauve_ too!
I don't wish I was good! I don't ever want to be good! They have turned
the corner! They are out of sight! I just won't go one step to the
"Earnest Workers!" It's all nonsense, any how! Just sewing, and
gossiping, and talking about the minister and his wife, and all the rest
of the congregation who are not there! No, _no_, NO! I'll just stay
right here at home, and I'll have--yes, I will--I'll have a real good
cry.

[Illustration:
Miss Bella Mason.
(of the Inner Sisterhood.)]

* * * * *

III

A Wild Fantasy
In Garrulous Red.

* * * * *

The Buzz-Saw Girl

I just must talk! I must talk all the time! Of course I talk entirely
too much--no one knows that any better than I do--yet I can not help it!
I know that my continual cackling is dreadful, and I know just exactly
when it begins to bore people, but somehow I can't stop myself, but go
right on and on in spite of myself.

Aunt Patsey says I am simply fearful, and just like a girl she used to
know, who lived down-East, a Miss Polly Blanton, who talked _all_
the time; told every thing, every thing she knew, every thing she had
ever heard; and then when she could think of nothing else, boldly began
on the _family secrets_. Well, I believe I am just like that
girl--because I am constantly telling things about our domestic life
which is by no means pleasant. Pa and ma lead an awful kind of an
existence--live just like cats and dogs. Now I ought never to tell that,
yet somehow it will slip out in spite of myself!

My pa says I really do act as if I did not have good sense, and I am,
for the world, just like ma. And ma, she says I am witho