sick, she would come and love me,
and make me feel better; she always does when I have been doing things.
It is n't my fault if I do bad things. When my mamma's sick, how can I
help doing things. I should n't think anybody would 'spect me to mind
Ann, cause she's so cross, and anyway she is n't my mamma, so she need
n't pretend that she can tell me when I must n't do things. I won't
let anybody but my mamma tell me what I must n't do, 'cept maybe my
papa. I think it will be too bad for people to scold me for going out
to-night, when I never had one bit a nice time. I can tell Ruthy I
went, though, anyway, and she will be just as 'sprised, and she will
say, 'I don't see how you ever dared, Ruby Harper.' Ruthy would n't
dare go out in the dark. She is a real little 'fraid-cat, that is what
she is. I 'm glad I am not so 'fraid of everything."

Ruby flounced about upon her pillow. She wanted to find fault with
some one else, so as not to have to listen to what her conscience was
telling her about herself, but it was not of much use to try to find
fault with gentle little Ruthy. Ruby knew that even if she had not
been afraid of going out in the dark, she would never have done
anything that she knew would make her mamma and papa feel so badly.
Ruthy did things sometimes that she ought not to do, and sometimes
forgot her tasks, but it was rarely, if ever, that she deliberately
planned a piece of mischief; and if she was concerned in one, it was
almost always because Ruby had coaxed her into it.

"If Ann was n't so cross, I don't believe I would do so many things,"
Ruby went on, still trying to find some one else to blame. "I never
did so many things when mamma was well. I am going to ask her to send
Ann away, 'cause it is her fault."

But Ruby know better than that. It was because she was so very sure
that it had been all her fault that she had done something that she had
known perfectly well would displease her mamma and papa if they should
know it, and that had worried her papa and made her mamma worse, that
she was so anxious to lay the blame upon some one else.

She turned her pillow over and over, and thumped it at last, she grew
so impatient because she could not go to sleep.

"I don't think it is very pleasant to stay awake all night, and keep
thinking about things," she said. "Oh, dearie me, I do wish I was
asleep. I wonder if people think when they are asleep. They can't
tell whether they do thin