"Miss Campbell! Miss Campbell!" said Patty and Edith, slipping with bare feet and night-gowned little figures into their sister's room--quite against orders, but it was a great occasion--"wake up, wake up, Maggie's confessed!"
And so it proved. There sat Maggie upright in her cot, with flushed face and excited eyes.
"I took them, Miss Campbell. I did take Towzer's goodies, and eatened them up."
Eleanor sat down on the side of the little bed.
"Oh, Maggie!" she said reproachfully. "How could you! But, still more, how could you deny it so often?"
Maggie looked at her bewilderedly, then meeting the stern reproach in her sister's eyes, hid her face in the bed-clothes while she murmured something about not having remembered before.
"Hush!" said Eleanor, "don't make things worse by false excuses."
"Make her tell all about it," whispered Patty.
"No," said Eleanor; "it would only tempt her to invent palliations. It is miserable enough--I don't want to hear any more."
What "palliations" were, to Patty was by no means clear.
"At least," she persisted, "you might ask her what she did with the box."
"I didn't touch the box," she said, "only the goodies."
"Be quiet, children; I will not have any more said. Don't you see what it will lead her into," said Eleanor.
But some of her old spirit seemed to have returned to Maggie. Her eyes sparkled with eagerness as she repeated, "I didn't touch the box; no, I never did. Only the goodies."
"Maggie, you are to say no more, but listen to me," said Eleanor. Then sending Patty and Edith away, she spoke to the culprit as earnestly as she knew how of the sin of which she had been guilty, ending by making her repeat after her a few simple words of prayer for pardon. All this Maggie received submissively, only whispering, as if to herself, "But I do think God might have made me remember before!" which remark Eleanor judged it best to ignore. Then she kissed Maggie, and the child clung to her affectionately. But still Eleanor could not feel satisfied; there was a dreamy vagueness about the little girl, a want, it seemed to Eleanor, of realising her fault to the full, which puzzled and perplexed her. Still Maggie was restored to favour, and in a day or two seemed much the same as usual, even flying into a passion when, contrary to Eleanor's order, the subject was alluded to in the nursery and curiosity expressed as to what had become of the box. "I don't mind you saying I took the goodies," she said. "I did; but I never touched the box."