Part 6

It was the last of the summer vacation in early September, just before school began, that a climax came to Amelia's idolatry and imitation of Lily. The Jenningses had not gone away that summer, so the two little girls had been thrown together a good deal. Mrs. Diantha never went away during a summer. She considered it her duty to remain at home, and she was quite pitiless to herself when it came to a matter of duty.

However, as a result she was quite ill during the last of August and the first of September. The season had been unusually hot, and Mrs. Diantha had not spared herself from her duty on account of the heat. She would have scorned herself if she had done so. But she could not, strong-minded as she was, avert something like a heat prostration after a long walk under a burning sun, nor weeks of confinement and idleness in her room afterward.

When September came, and a night or two of comparative coolness, she felt stronger; still she was compelled by most unusual weakness to refrain from her energetic trot in her duty-path; and then it was that something happened.

One afternoon Lily fluttered over to Amelia's, and Amelia, ever on the watch, spied her.

“May I go out and see Lily?” she asked Grandmother Stark.

“Yes, but don't talk under the windows; your mother is asleep.”

Amelia ran out.

“I declare,” said Grandmother Stark to Grandmother Wheeler, “I was half a mind to tell that child to wait a minute and slip on one of those pretty dresses. I hate to have her go on the street in that old gingham, with that Jennings girl dressed up like a wax doll.”

“I know it.”

“And now poor Diantha is so weak--and asleep--it would not have annoyed her.”

“I know it.”

Grandmother Stark looked at Grandmother Wheeler. Of the two she possessed a greater share of original sin compared with the size of her soul. Moreover, she felt herself at liberty to circumvent her own daughter. Whispering, she unfolded a daring scheme to the other grandmother, who stared at her aghast a second out of her lovely blue eyes, then laughed softly.

“Very well,” said she, “if you dare.”

“I rather think I dare!” said Grandmother Stark. “Isn't Diantha Wheeler my own daughter?” Grandmother Stark had grown much bolder since Mrs. Diantha had been ill.

Meantime Lily and Amelia walked down the street until they came to a certain vacant lot intersected by a foot-path between tall, feathery grasses and goldenrod and asters and milkweed. They entered the foot-path, and swarms of little butterflies rose around them, and once in a while a protesting bumblebee.

“I am afraid we will be stung by the bees,” said Amelia.

“Bumblebees never sting,” said Lily; and Amelia believed her.

When the foot-path ended, there was the riverbank. The two little girls sat down under a clump of brook willows and talked, while the river, full of green and blue and golden lights, slipped past them and never stopped.

Then Lily proceeded to unfold a plan, which was not philosophical, but naughtily ingenious. By this time Lily knew very well that Amelia admired her, and imitated her as successfully as possible, considering the drawback of dress and looks.

When she had finished Amelia was quite pale. “I am afraid, I am afraid, Lily,” said she.

“What of?”

“My mother will find out; besides, I am afraid it isn't right.”

“Who ever told you it was wrong?”

“Nobody ever did,” admitted Amelia.

“Well, then you haven't any reason to think it is,” said Lily, triumphantly. “And how is your mother ever going to find it out?”

“I don't know.”

“Isn't she ill in her room? And does she ever come to kiss you good night, the way my mother does, when she is well?”

“No,” admitted Amelia.