"
"Who's there?" Elma mustered up courage to ask, in a hushed voice
of terror, hiding her head under the bed-clothes.
"It's me, darling," Mrs. Clifford answered, very softly and sweetly.
Elma had never heard her mother speak in so tender and gentle a
tone before, though they loved one another well, and were far more
sympathetic than most mothers and daughters. And besides, that
knock was so unlike mamma's. Why so soft and low?
Had mamma discovered her? With a despairing sense of being caught
she looked down at her tell-tale clothes and the unslept-in bed.
"Oh, what shall I ever do?" she thought to herself, confusedly. "I
can't let mamma come in and catch me like this. She'll ask why on
earth I didn't undress last night. And then what could I ever say?
How could I ever explain to her?"
The awful sense of shame-facedness grew upon her still more deeply
than ever. She jumped up and whispered through the door, in a
very penitent voice, "Oh, mother, I can't let you in just yet. Do
you mind waiting five minutes? Come again by-and-by. I--I--I'm so
awfully tired and queer this morning somehow."
Mrs. Clifford's voice had an answering little ring of terror in
it, as she replied at once, in the same soft tone--
"Very well, darling.
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