them up
town, but not near Stella's, and they had to wait another half hour at
a crossing for another car.

It was two o'clock in the morning before Lettie, with Stella and her
brother, reached the house, a wretched, draggled-looking, and very
cross party, all without hats,--for these had been lost in the
river,--and Lettie, her fine silk dress a ruin, her delicate shoes a
shapeless mass from which the water squirted as she walked.

By breakfast time Lettie, who was a delicate girl, was in a high
fever, and the doctor, who was hastily called in, decided that she was
threatened with pneumonia. Lettie's mother was notified, and hurried
down, and, bundled up in many wraps, Lettie was conveyed in an
ambulance to her home and her own bed, where she remained for weeks,
battling for her life, delirious much of the time, and living over in
fancy the horrors of the day she had had her own way.

Some weeks later, after her recovery, her mother, one morning, said
quietly, "Lettie, let us count up the cost of your doing as you
liked."

Lettie trembled, but her mother went on.

"There's your dress and hat and shoes ruined and lost in the
river--consequently the loss of your visit to your Aunt Joe; there's
your illness, which deprived you of the school-closing festivities;
and the doctor's bill, which took all the money I had saved for our
trip to the seashore this summer."

She was going on, but Lettie, now thoroughly penitent, suddenly
resolved to make a clean breast of all her losses, and have the thing
over.

"Oh, mother!" she cried, burying her face in her mother's lap, "that
isn't all my losses; I must tell you, I can't bear it any longer
alone," and then with sobs and tears she told the dismal story of the
robbery.

"Lettie," said her mother, "I knew all that the very day it happened.
After you had gone to Stella's the policeman came to the house to see
if you had told him the truth. When he told me what you had said I
went to your room and discovered the loss."

"Oh, mother!" cried Lettie, "I'll never--never"--

"If I had not learned it then," went on her mother, "I should have
known it later, for in your delirium you talked of nothing else; you
went over that fearful scene constantly. I feared it would really
affect your reason."

"Oh, mother!" cried Lettie, "you never told me!"

"We will not speak of it again," said her mother; "I think you have
learned your lesson."

* * * *