the chief of police discovered that his own horse had gone. “Did you see which way he went, sis?” he inquired of Lily, and she pointed down the road, and sobbed as she did so.
The policeman said something bad under his breath, then advised Lily to run home to her ma, and started down the road.
When he was out of sight, Lily drew back the pink-and-white things from Johnny's face. “Well, you didn't kill her this time,” said she.
“Why do you s'pose she didn't tell all about it?” said Johnny, gaping at her.
“How do I know? I suppose she was ashamed to tell how she had been fighting, maybe.”
“No, that was not why,” said Johnny in a deep voice.
“Why was it, then?”
“SHE KNEW.”
Johnny began to climb out of the baby-carriage.
“What will she do next, then?” asked Lily.
“I don't know,” Johnny replied, gloomily.
He was out of the carriage then, and Lily was readjusting the pillows and things. “Get that nice embroidered pillow I threw over the bushes,” she ordered, crossly. Johnny obeyed. When she had finished putting the baby-carriage to rights she turned upon poor little Johnny Trumbull, and her face wore the expression of a queen of tragedy. “Well,” said Lily Jennings, “I suppose I shall have to marry you when I am grown up, after all this.”
Johnny gasped. He thought Lily the most beautiful girl he knew, but to be confronted with murder and marriage within a few minutes was almost too much. He flushed a burning red. He laughed foolishly. He said nothing.
“It will be very hard on me,” stated Lily, “to marry a boy who tried to murder his nice aunt.”
Johnny revived a bit under this feminine disdain. “I didn't try to murder her,” he said in a weak voice.
“You might have, throwing her down in all that awful dust, a nice, clean lady. Ladies are not like boys. It might kill them very quickly to be knocked down on a dusty road.”
“I didn't mean to kill her.”
“You might have.”
“Well, I didn't, and—she—”
“What?”
“She spanked me.”
“Pooh! That doesn't amount to anything,” sniffed Lily.
“It does if you are a boy.”
“I don't see why.”
“Well, I can't help it if you don't. It does.”
“Why shouldn't a boy be spanked when he's naughty, just as well as a girl, I would like to know?”
“Because he's a boy.”
Lily looked at Johnny Trumbull. The great fact did remain. He had been spanked, he had thrown his own aunt down in the dust. He had taken advantage of her little-girl protection, but he was a boy. Lily did not understand his why at all, but she bowed before it. However, that she would not admit. She made a rapid change of base. “What,” said she, “are you going to do next?”
Johnny stared at her. It was a puzzle.
“If,” said Lily, distinctly, “you are afraid to go home, if you think your aunt will tell, I will let you get into Aunt Laura's baby-carriage again, and I will wheel you a little way.”
Johnny would have liked at that moment to knock Lily down, as he had his aunt Janet. Lily looked at him shrewdly. “Oh yes,” said she, “you can knock me down in the dust there if you want to, and spoil my nice clean dress. You will be a boy, just the same.”
“I will never marry you, anyway,” declared Johnny.
“Aren't you afraid I'll tell on you and get you another spanking if you don't?”
“Tell if you want to. I'd enough sight rather be spanked than marry you.”
A gleam of respect came into the little girl's wisely regarding blue eyes. She, with the swiftness of her sex, recognized in forlorn little Johnny the making of a man. “Oh, well,” said she, loftily, “I never was a telltale, and, anyway, we are not grown up, and there will be my trousseau to get, and a lot of other things to do first. I shall go to Europe before I am married, too, and I might meet a boy much nicer than you on the steamer.”
“Meet him if you want to.”
Lily looked at Johnny Trumbull with more than respect—with admiration—but she kept guard over her little tongue. “Well, you can leave that for the future,” said she with a grown-up air.
“I ain't going to leave it. It's settled for good and all now,” growled Johnny.
To his immense surprise, Lily curved her white embroidered sleeve over her face and began to weep.
“What's the matter now?” asked Johnny, sulkily, after a minute.
“I think you are a real horrid boy,” sobbed Lily.
Lily looked like nothing but a very frilly, sweet, white flower. Johnny could not see her face. There was nothing to be seen except that delicate fluff of white, supported on dainty white-socked, white-slippered limbs.
“Say,” said Johnny.
“You are real cruel, when I—I saved your—li-fe,” wailed Lily.
“Say,” said Johnny, “maybe if I don't see any other girl I like better I will marry you when I am grown up, but I won't if you don't stop that howling.”
Lily stopped immediately. She peeped at him, a blue peep from under the flopping, embroidered brim of her hat. “Are you in earnest?” She smiled faintly. Her blue eyes, wet with tears, were lovely; so was her hesitating smile.
“Yes, if you don't act silly,” said Johnny. “Now you had better run home, or your mother will wonder where that baby-carriage is.”
Lily walked away, smiling over her shoulder, the smile of the happily subjugated. “I won't tell anybody, Johnny,” she called back in her flute-like voice.
“Don't care if you do,” returned Johnny, looking at her with chin in the air and shoulders square, and Lily wondered at his bravery.
But Johnny was not so brave and he did care. He knew that his best course was an immediate return home, but he did not know what he might have to face. He could not in the least understand why his aunt Janet had not told at once. He was sure that she knew. Then he thought of a possible reason for her silence; she might have feared his arrest at the hands of the chief of police. Johnny quailed. He knew his aunt Janet to be rather a brave sort of woman. If she had fears, she must have had reason for them. He might even now be arrested. Suppose Lily did tell. He had a theory that girls usually told. He began to speculate concerning the horrors of prison.
