Red's dimpled face was flushing with ominous colour about the eyes.
"Really!" cried Sophia, and then she stopped, arrested by her own word.
How was it possible to present reality to eyes that looked out through such maze of ignorance and folly; it seemed easier to take up a sterner theme and comment upon the wickedness of disobedience and secrecy.

Yet all the time her words missed the mark, because the true sin of these two pretty criminals was utter folly.

Surely if the world, and their fragment of it, had been what they thought--the youth a hero, and their parents wrongly proud--their action had not been so wholly evil! But how could she trim all the thoughts of their silly heads into true proportion?
"I shall have to tell papa, you know; I couldn't take the responsibility of not telling him; but I won't speak till this press of work is over, because he is so tired, so you can be thinking how you will apologise to him." Both Blue and Red were weeping now, and Sophia, feeling that she had made adequate impression, was glad to pause.
Red was the first to withdraw her handkerchief from dewy eyes.

Her tone and attitude seemed penitent, and Sophia looked at her encouragingly.
"Sister Sophia"-- meekly--"does he say in his letter where he is, or--or"-- the voice trembled--"if he's ever coming back ?" For such disconsolate affection Sophia felt that the letter referred to was perhaps the best medicine.

"I will read you all that he says." And she read it slowly and distinctly, as one reads a lesson to children.
"Dear Eliza." "He didn't think she was 'dear'" pouted Blue.