She kept up her disturbed ponderings until the house grew dark and still. Then, very quietly, she crept out of bed and dressed herself in the dark. She put on her cloak and hat. After a second's hesitation she added the white fox furs. Then, holding her breath, she stole down the back stairs and out the kitchen door.
The night seemed more fearsomely spectral than ever--it must be terribly late; but she sped through the white silence resolutely. She was glad Arthur's boarding-house was only two blocks away. She knew which was his window; she stood beneath it and softly gave “the crowd's” whistle. Waited--whistled again. There was his window going up at last. And Arthur's tousled head peering out.
“I just wanted to let you know I can't come to the Library after all, Arthur! No!--Don't say anything, now!--I'll explain all about it when I get a chance. And that wasn't father--it turned out all right. No, no!--Don't say anything now! Maybe I'll be in the kitchen to-morrow. Good night!”
Then, while Arthur stared after her amazedly, she turned and scurried like a scared rabbit through the white silence.
As she ran she was wondering whether Arthur had got a really good view of the furs in the moonlight; was resolving to urge him to go to church next Sunday night even if SHE couldn't; was telling herself she mustn't ENTIRELY relinquish her hold on him-for his sake...
So full were her thoughts that she forgot to be much afraid. And the Lord must have been with her, for she reached the kitchen door in safety and regained her own room without detection. In bed once again, a great, soft, holy peace seemed to enfold her. Everything was right with everybody--with father and mother and God and Arthur--everybody.
At the very time she was going off into smiling slumber--one hand nestling in the white fox furs on her pillow--it happened that her father was making half-apologetic explanations to her mother: everything had seemed to come down on the child in a lump--commands against walking and against boys and against going out nights and everything. He couldn't help feeling for the youngster. So he thought he'd bring her the white fox furs she seemed to have set her heart on.
And Mrs. Merriam, who could understand a father's indulgent, sympathetic heart even though--as Missy believed--she wasn't capable of “understanding” a daughter's, didn't have it in her, then, to spoil his pleasure by expounding that wanting furs and wanting beaux were really one and the same evil.