, still in that fierce whisper:

"Stop yelling, can't you! No, I suppose you 'didn't mean to'--Right
behind the door!" His eyes withered her.

"Truly, I didn't, Pete." Her own voice, now, had sunk to a whisper.
"Cross my heart I didn't!"

But he still glared.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself--always sneaking round! You ought
to be ashamed of yourself!"

"Oh, I am, Pete," she quavered, though, in fact, she wasn't sure in just
what lay the shamefulness of her deed; till he'd spoken she had felt
nothing but Romance in the air.

"Well, you ought to be," Pete reiterated. He hesitated a second, then
went on:

"You aren't going to blab it all around, are you?"

"Oh, no!" breathed Missy, horrified at such a suggestion. "Well, see
that you don't! I'll give you some candy to-morrow."

"Yes--candy," came Polly's voice faintly from the divan.

Then, as the subject seemed to be exhausted, Missy crept away, permeated
with the sense of her sin.

It was horrible! To have sinned just when she'd found the wonderful
new feeling. Just when she'd resolved to be good always, that she might
dwell in the house of the Lord forever. She hadn't intended to sin; but
she must have been unusually iniquitous. Pete's face had told her
that. It was particularly horrible because sin had stolen upon her so
suddenly. Does sin always take you unawares, that way? A new and black
fear settled heavily over her.

When she finally returned to the porch with the paper-flowers box, she
was embarrassed by grandma's asking what had kept her so long. It
would have been easy to make up an excuse, but this new sense of sin
restrained her from lying. So she mumbled unintelligibly, till grandma
interrupted:

"Do you feel sick, Missy?" she asked anxiously.

"No, ma'am."

"Are you sure? You ate so much at dinner. Maybe you didn't take a long
enough nap."

"I'm not sleepy, grandma."

But grandma insisted on feeling her forehead--her hands. They were hot.

"I think I'd better put you to bed for a little while," said grandma.
"You're feverish. And if you're not better by night, you mustn't go to
the meeting."

Missy's heart sank, weighted with a new fear. It would be an unbearable
calamity to miss going to the meeting. For, that night, a series of
"revivals" were to start at the Methodist Church; and, though father was
a Presbyterian (to oblige mother), grandpa and grandma were Methodists
and would go every night; and so long as mother was away