uslin
canopy and containing a nest of pink and white, but an empty nest.
Lily's little brother's carriage had a spring broken, and she had been
to borrow her aunt's baby-carriage, so that nurse could wheel little
brother up and down the veranda. Nurse had a headache, and the
maids were busy, and Lily, who was a kind little soul and, moreover,
imaginative, and who liked the idea of pushing an empty baby-carriage,
had volunteered to go for it. All the way she had been dreaming of what
was not in the carriage. She had come directly out of a dream of doll
twins when she chanced upon the tragedy in the road.

"What have you been doing now, Johnny Trumbull?" said she. She was
tremulous, white with horror, but she stood her ground. It was curious,
but Johnny Trumbull, with all his bravery, was always cowed before Lily.
Once she had turned and stared at him when he had emerged triumphant
but with bleeding nose from a fight; then she had sniffed delicately and
gone her way. It had only taken a second, but in that second the victor
had met moral defeat.

He looked now at her pale, really scared face, and his own was as pale.
He stood and kicked the dust until the swirling column of it reached his
head.

"That's right," said Lily; "stand and kick up dust all over me. WHAT
have you been doing?"

Johnny was trembling so he could hardly stand. He stopped kicking dust.

"Have you killed your aunt?" demanded Lily. It was monstrous, but she
had a very dramatic imagination, and there was a faint hint of enjoyment
in her tragic voice.

"Guess she's just choked by dust," volunteered Johnny, hoarsely. He
kicked the dust again.

"That's right," said Lily. "If she's choked to death by dust, stand
there and choke her some more. You are a murderer, Johnny Trumbull, and
my mamma will never allow me to speak to you again, and Madame will not
allow you to come to school. AND--I see your papa driving up the street,
and there is the chief policeman's buggy just behind." Lily acquiesced
entirely in the extraordinary coincidence of the father and the chief of
police appearing upon the scene. The unlikely seemed to her the likely.
"NOW," said she, cheerfully, "you will be put in state prison and locked
up, and then you will be put to death by a very strong telephone."

Johnny's father was leaning out of his buggy, looking back at the chief
of police in his, and the mare was jogging very slowly in a perfect reek
of dust. Lily, who was, in spit