We have had a dreadful time at our house, and I have done very wrong. Oh, I always admit it when I\'ve done wrong. There\'s nothing meaner than to pretend that you haven\'t done wrong when everybody knows you have. I didn\'t mean anything by it, though, and Sue ought to have stood by me, when I did it all on her account, and just because I pitied her, if she was my own sister, and it was more her fault, I really think, than it was mine.

Mr. Withers is Sue\'s new young man, as I have told you already. He comes to see her every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening, and Mr. Travers comes all the other evenings, and Mr. Martin is liable to come any time, and generally does—that is, if he doesn\'t have the rheumatism. Though he hasn\'t but one real leg, he has twice as much rheumatism as father, with all his legs, and there is something very queer about it; and if I was he, I\'d get a leg of something better than cork, and perhaps he\'d have less pain in it.

It all happened last Tuesday night. Just as it was getting[Pg 125] dark, and Sue was expecting Mr. Travers every minute, who should come in but Mr. Martin! Now Mr. Martin is such an old acquaintance, and father thinks so much of him, that Sue had to ask him in, though she didn\'t want him to meet Mr. Travers. So when she heard somebody open the front gate, she said, "Oh, Mr. Martin I\'m so thirsty and the servant has gone out, and you know just where the milk is for you went down cellar to get some the last time you were here do you think you would mind getting some for me?" Mr. Martin had often gone down cellar to help himself to milk, and I don\'t see what makes him so fond of it, so he said, "Certainly with great pleasure," and started down the cellar stairs.

It wasn\'t Mr. Travers, but Mr. Withers, who had come on the wrong night. He had not much more than got into the parlor when Sue came rushing out to me, for I was swinging in the hammock on the front piazza, and said, "My goodness gracious Jimmy what shall I do here\'s Mr. Withers and Mr. Travers will be here in a few minutes and there\'s Mr. Martin down cellar and I feel as if I should fly what shall I do?"

I was real sorry for her, and thought I\'d help her, for girls are not like us. They never know what to do when they are in a scrape, and they are full of absence of mind when they ought to have lots of presence of mind. So[Pg 126] I said: "I\'ll fix it for you, Sue. Just leave it all to me. You stay here and meet Mr. Travers, who is just coming around the corner, and I\'ll manage Mr. Withers." Sue said, "You darling little fellow there don\'t muss my hair;" and I went in, and said to Mr. Withers, in an awfully mysterious way, "Mr. Withers, I hear a noise in the cellar. Don\'t tell Sue, for she\'s drea............