ful
for the interesting things I told Maria.

I will now tell what happened. It began the day Billy heard the station
agent at Whitman read Aunt Elizabeth's telegram to Harry Goward. The
telegram had a lot of silly letters and words in it, so Billy didn't
know what it meant, and, of course, he didn't care. The careless child
would have forgotten all about it if I hadn't happened to meet him
at Lorraine's after he got back from Whitman. He is always going to
Lorraine's for some of Sallie's cookies--she makes perfectly delicious
ones, round and fat and crumbly, with currants on the top. Billy had
taken so many that his pockets bulged out on the sides, and his mouth
was so full he only nodded when he saw me. So, of course, I stopped to
tell him how vulgar that was, and piggish, and to see if he had left any
for me, and he was so anxious to divert my mind that as soon as he could
speak he began to talk about seeing Aunt Elizabeth over in Whitman. That
interested me, so I got the whole thing out of him, and the very minute
he had finished telling it I made him go straight and tell Peggy. I told
him to do it delicately, and not yell it out. I thought it would cheer
and comfort Peggy to know that some one was doing something, instead
of standing around and looking solemn, but, alas! it did not, and Billy
told me with his own lips that it was simply awful to see Peggy's face.
Even he noticed it, so it must have been pretty bad. He said her eyes
got so big it made him think of the times she used to imitate the wolf
in Red Riding-Hood and scare us 'most to death when we were young.

When Billy told me that, I saw that perhaps we shouldn't have told
Peggy, so the next day I went over to Lorraine's again to ask her what
she thought about it. I stopped at noon on my way home from school, and
I didn't ring the bell, because I never do. I walked right in as usual,
falling over the books and teacups and magazines on the floor, and I
found Lorraine sitting at the tea-table with her head down among the
little cakes and bits of toast left over from the afternoon before. She
didn't look up, so I knew she hadn't heard me, and I saw her shoulders
shake, and then I knew that she was crying. I had never seen Lorraine
cry before, and I felt dreadfully, but I didn't know just what to do or
what to say, and while I stood staring at her I noticed that there was
a photograph on the table with a lot of faded flowers. The face of the
photograph was