victor, would probably go home considerably the worse in appearance; and
he could anticipate the consequences were his father to encounter him.

"Shucks!" said Johnny Trumbull, of the fine old Trumbull family and
Madame's exclusive school. "Shucks! who wants your old hen? We had
chicken for dinner, anyway."

"So did we," said Arnold Carruth.

"We did, and corn," said Lee.

"We did," said Jim.

Lily stepped forth from the alder-bush. "If," said she, "I were a
boy, and had started to have a chicken-roast, I would have HAD a
chicken-roast."

But every boy, even the valiant Johnny Trumbull, was gone in a mad
scutter. This sudden apparition of a girl was too much for their nerves.
They never even knew who the girl was, although little Arnold Carruth
said she had looked to him like "Copy-Cat," but the others scouted the
idea.

Lily Jennings made the best of her way out of the wood across lots to
the road. She was not in a particularly enviable case. Amelia Wheeler
was presumably in her bed, and she saw nothing for it but to take the
difficult way to Amelia's.

Lily tore a great rent in the gingham going up the cedar-tree, but that
was nothing to what followed. She entered through Amelia's window, her
prim little room, to find herself confronted by Amelia's mother in a
wrapper, and her two grandmothers. Grandmother Stark had over her arm
a beautiful white embroidered dress. The two old ladies had entered the
room in order to lay the white dress on a chair and take away Amelia's
gingham, and there was no Amelia. Mrs. Diantha had heard the commotion,
and had risen, thrown on her wrapper, and come. Her mother had turned
upon her.

"It is all your fault, Diantha," she had declared.

"My fault?" echoed Mrs. Diantha, bewildered. "Where is Amelia?"

"We don't know," said Grandmother Stark, "but you have probably driven
her away from home by your cruelty."

"Cruelty?"

"Yes, cruelty. What right had you to make that poor child look like a
fright, so people laughed at her? We have made her some dresses that
look decent, and had come here to leave them, and to take away those
old gingham things that look as if she lived in the almshouse, and leave
these, so she would either have to wear them or go without, when we
found she had gone."

It was at that crucial moment that Lily entered by way of the window.

"Here she is now," shrieked Grandmother Stark. "Amelia, where--" Then
she stopped short.

Everybody stared at Li