"What can it be?" said she to herself. "Cousin Appolina could not have found out then about the slippers, for she seemed to be in a very pleasant mood when she came to the poetry-table. What in the world made her buy all the poems? She must have come upon one that she liked, or one that she didn't like, that made her buy them all. Probably that she didn't like, but which one, I wonder?" But as I have said, they rang Miss Briggs's door-bell, punctual to the moment. James, the melancholy footman, seemed even more solemn than usual as he ushered them up the stairs to the door of Miss Briggs's library. "Miss Reid and Miss Margaret Reid," he announced, in a sepulchral voice, and withdrew, leaving them to their fate. Miss Briggs sat at her desk writing. She gave the girls a cold good-morning, and motioned them to be seated. She continued to write, and her quill pen travelled briskly across the page, scratching loudly. Millicent's heart sank. The slippers were placed in reproachful prominence upon the top of the desk. The poems were not to be seen. After some minutes' silence, broken only by a deep-drawn sigh from Milly, a warning cough from Peggy, and the scratching of the quill, Miss Briggs turned in her chair and faced them. She removed the spectacles which she had worn when writing, and raised her lorgnette. The girls thought that no stern judge in the days of witchcraft could have appeared more formidable. She scrutinized them piercingly, coldly, judicially. Then she spoke. "I have asked you to come to me, young ladies, that some small matters may be cleared up. Who wrote that poetry?" It was not the slippers entirely, then. It was "To a Pearl in an Oyster-shell"; and Peggy would go to England. Millicent's eyes were on the ground, the color came and went in her cheeks, her head drooped. "I did," she faltered. "Just as I thought. No one but you, you silly scrap of sentiment, would be guilty of writing such trash. It is now consigned to its proper destination;" and she pointed to a large scrap-basket which the girls had not before noticed, and which was filled to overflowing with the ill-fated booklets. "I have looked through them all, and find nothing but harmless trash, with one exception. As you may suppose, it is this one;" and from under some papers on her desk she drew another. "I suppose it is the sonnet to 'A Pearl in an Oyster-shell,'" gasped Millicent. "I am sorry, Cousin Appolina, that it went in. I--" "Pearl in an oyster-shell? Nonsense! What do I care about pearls in oyster-shells? Do not try any of those evasions with me; they are of no use. I am shocked, pained, astonished that one of my own kith and kin, the daughter of my cousin Van Aspinwall Reid, should have been guilty of such--such--well, words fail me!--such gross impertinence!" Millicent forgot her misery, and stared at Miss Briggs in astonishment. "I don't know what you mean, Cousin Appolina, unless it is the slippers."