"Well, when she came in," continued Maggie, giving point to her story by the look she fixed upon Lily,--"when she came in, after doing such a lot of mischief, she didn't seem to think it was any great harm after all; but she just said, 'Ladies, I am sorry I kept you waiting, but it is only a quarter of an hour.' Then the wise old Quaker lady stood up and looked very severe at her, and she said, 'Friend, thee'--thee is the way Quakers say you--'Friend, thee has wasted three hours of time that did not belong to thee. Here are twelve of us, and a quarter of an hour for each makes three hours, and you--thee, I mean--had no right to do it, and thee ought to be ashamed of yourself.' And the lady was ashamed of herself, 'cause it made her feel horridly to be talked to that way before so many people; and she never did so again, which was a great blessing to every one who knew her, because she made herself a great inconvenience."
And here Maggie closed her story, which she had one day lately found in some book or paper, and had brought it up on this occasion for Lily's benefit, adding to it sundry embellishments of her own, which, as she thought, made it more telling and serviceable.
"But," said Lily, who took the moral to herself as it was intended she should do, "but we're not a meeting, and you're not a Quaker lady, Maggie. It's only a party."
"_Only_ a party!" echoed Maggie, in an aggrieved tone, which told that this was adding insult to injury; "she says, 'Only a party'! Now, Lily, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I just want to tell you something."
And Maggie held up the bit of paper on which she had taken the pains to note down the sum Mrs. Rush had done for her, lest she should forget the number of minutes.
"You kept us waiting more than twenty minutes, Lily. Miss Ashton invited us at four, and you did not come till twenty minutes after; and there are four of us besides yourself, so there's one whole hour, and forty minutes,--which is 'most three-quarters of an hour,--one whole hour and forty minutes of party wasted, and only twenty minutes of it was your own."
"And I'm sure it's a great deal harder to have a party wasted than it is a meeting," said Belle.
"I never thought about it," said Lily, by no means offended, but considerably astonished at the way in which her short-comings were brought home to her. "I never thought of that, and I'm real sorry. I'll never do it again."