I covered the multitude of my sins on the desk with a newspaper and sat down quietly in a chair.
By and by I asked, "Are you 'most ready to go ?" "Yes--come on--it's after twelve o'clock," said Mr.Dunkelberg.

"Sally will be back from school now." My conscience got the better of me and I confessed about the ink bottle and was forgiven.
So we walked to the big house of the Dunkelbergs and I could hear my heart beating when we turned in at the gate--the golden gate of my youth it must have been, for after I had passed it I thought no more as a child.

That rude push which Mr.Grimshaw gave me had hurried the passing.
I was a little surprised at my own dignity when Sally opened the door to welcome us.

My uncle told Aunt Deel that I acted and spoke like Silas Wright, "so nice and proper." Sally was different, too--less playful and more beautiful with long yellow curls covering her shoulders.
"How nice you look!" she said as she took my arm and led me into her playroom.
"These are my new clothes," I boasted.

"They are very expensive and I have to be careful of them." I remember not much that we said or did but I could never forget how she played for me on a great shiny piano--I had never seen one before--and made me feel very humble with music more to my liking than any I have heard since--crude and simple as it was--while her pretty fingers ran up and down the keyboard.
O magic ear of youth! I wonder how it would sound to me now--the rollicking lilt of _Barney Leave the Girls Alone_--even if a sweet maid flung its banter at me with flashing fingers and well-fashioned lips.
I behaved myself with great care at the table--I remember that--and, after dinner, we played in the dooryard and the stable, I with a great fear of tearing my new clothes.