A day before we left the Court, we were all sitting in the cedar parlor—that is, my mother, Meg, Rosamond, and I—busy in finishing a certain worked coverlet which my aunt had had in hand a long time, and which she wished to give my mother for a parting present. Andrew was reading to us out of an English chronicle, but I fear we young ones cared more about the flowers on our work than about the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster. I can see at this moment the daisy with pink edges and a yellow centre on which I was bestowing all my skill, when we were all startled by the entrance of Aunt Amy, evidently in a high state of excitement. I thought I should like to sink into the earth when I saw in her hand that identical red leather and gilded book which I had lent Betty, or rather which she had taken for herself. "So, sister d'Antin!" said my aunt, in her rare tone of excitement. "This is the way your daughter rewards my hospitality—for I won't say you, though I must say, knowing what she was, I think you might have looked out for her—bringing her vile and corrupting books into a decent house, and lending them to my innocent maids. This is what one gets for one's goodness in taking in—" "Mother!" said Andrew, more sternly than I ever heard him speak to her before or afterward. "Oh, you may say mother as much as you please, son; but I wish your father had taken my advice and looked out a good honest Cornish maid for you, instead of betrothing you to a French mademoiselle whom none of us knew, to bring her corruptions in here. Just look at this book which she lent Betty, and told her not to tell her mother, and which the poor child just now came and brought me, confessing with shame and tears how wicked she had been. Just look at it, that is all!" And she flung it on the ground as if it had been a snake or spider. Andrew took it up, looked at one or two places, and then, with a glance I shall never forget, he gave it to me. My mother took it from my unresisting hand. "What does this mean, Vevette?" said she. "Where did this book come from?" "My Aunt Jemima gave it to me," I answered, hardly able to speak. "And you concealed it from me? Oh, my daughter!" "Of course she concealed it," said my aunt triumphantly. "Let Vevette speak, mother, since you have chosen to make this matter public, in what I must needs call an ill-judged manner," said Andrew, in that calm voice of authority which will be heard. "How was it, Vevette?" I tried to explain, but between my own shame and confusion and my aunt's interruptions, I am conscious that I made but a lame business of it. I did manage to say, however, that though I sat down and read the first poem with Betty, I had refused to read any more, and that I had absolutely refused to lend the book to Betty, who had taken it without leave. "Yes, I know all about that!" said my aunt.