They stayed in there a long time--what were they doing? For long s.p.a.ces she couldn't even hear their voices. Grandma chattered away with her usual vivacity; presently she suggested that they leave off crocheting and work on paper-flowers a while. What a delight! Missy was just learning the intricacies of peonies, and adored to squeeze the rosy tissue-paper over the head of a hat-pin and observe the amazing result.

"Run up to my room, dear," said grandma. "You'll find the box on the closet shelf."

Missy knew the "paper-flower box." It was a big hat-box, appropriately covered with pink-posied paper--a quaintly beautiful box.

In the house, pa.s.sing the parlour door, she tip-toed, scarcely knowing why. There was now utter silence in the parlour--why were they so still?

Perhaps they had gone out somewhere. Without any definite plan, but still tip-toeing in the manner she and grandma had approached to overhear the law-suit, she moved toward the partly-closed door. Through the crevice they were out of vision, but she could hear a subdued murmur--they were in there after all! Missy, too interested to be really conscious of her act, strained her ears.

Polly Currier murmured:

"Why, what do you mean?--what are you doing?"

Pete murmured:

"What a question!--I'm trying to kiss you."

"Let me go!--you're mussing my dress! You can't kiss me--let me go!"

Pete murmured:

"Not till you let me kiss you!"

Polly Currier murmured:

"I suppose that's the way you talk to all the girls!--I know you college men!"

Pete murmured, a whole world of reproach in one word:

"Polly."

They became silent--a long silence. Missy stood petrified behind the door; her breathing ceased but her heart beat quickly. Here was Romance--not the made-up kind of Romance you surrept.i.tiously read in mother's magazines, but real Romance! And she--Missy--knew them both!

And they were just the other side of the door!

Too thrilled to reflect upon the nature of her deed, scarcely conscious of herself as a being at all, Missy craned her neck and peered around the door. They were sitting close together on the divan. Pete's arm was about Polly Currier's shoulder. And he was kissing her! Curious, that!

Hadn't she just heard Polly tell him that he couldn't?... Oh, beautiful!

She started noiselessly to withdraw, but her foot struck the conch sh.e.l.l which served as a door-stop. At the noise two startled pairs of eyes were upon her immediately; and Pete, leaping up, advanced upon her with a fierce whisper:

"You little spy-eye!--What're you up to? You little spy-eye!"

A swift wave of shame engulfed Missy.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" she cried in a stricken voice. "I didn't mean to, Pete--I--"

He interrupted her, 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 embarra.s.sed 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, she could go to meeting with them. In the fervour of the new religious feeling she craved sanctified surroundings.

So, though she didn't feel at all sick and though she wanted desperately to make paper-flowers, she docilely let herself be put to bed. Anyway, perhaps it was just a penance sent to her by our Lord, to make atonement for her sin.

By supper-time grandma agreed that she seemed well enough to go.

Throughout the meal Pete, who was wearing an aloof and serious manner, refrained from looking at her, and she strived to keep her own anxious gaze away from him. He wasn't going to the meeting with the other three.

Just as the lingering June twilight was beginning to darken--the most peaceful hour of the day--Missy walked off sedately between her grandparents. She was wearing her white "best dress." It seemed appropriate that your best clothes should be always involved in the matter of church going; that the spiritual beatification within should be reflected by the garments without.

The Methodist church in Cherryvale prided itself that it was not "new-fangled." It was not nearly so pretentious in appearance as was the Presbyterian church. Missy, in her heart, preferred stained-gla.s.s windows and their glorious reflections, as an a.s.set to religion; but at night services you were not apt to note that deficiency.

She sat well up front with her grandparents, as befitted their position as pillars of the church, and from this vantage had a good view of the proceedings. She could see every one in the choir, seated up there behind the organ on the side platform. Polly Currier was in the choir; she wasn't a Methodist, but she had a flute-like soprano voice, and the Methodists--whom all the town knew had "poor singing"--had overstepped the boundaries of sectarianism for this revival. Polly looked like an angel in pink lawn and rose-wreathed leghorn hat; she couldn't know that Missy gazed upon her with secret adoration as a creature of Romance--one who had been kissed! Missy continued to gaze at Polly during the preliminary songs--tunes rather disappointing, not so beautiful as Missy's own favourite hymns--till the preacher appeared.

The Reverend Poole--"Brother" Poole as grandpa called him, though he wasn't a relation--was a very tall, thin man with a blonde, rather vacuous face; but at exhortation and prayer he "had the gift." For so good a man, he had a remarkably poor opinion of the virtues of his fellow-men. Missy couldn't understand half his fiery eloquence; but she felt his inspiration; and she gathered that most of the congregation must be sinners. Knowing herself to be a sinner, she wasn't so much surprised at that.