Aunt Madge's Story Part 8

We keep hoping every day to hear her confess the truth; she may be sure there is nothing that would make us all so glad."

So mother knew! She must have known all along! She turned to bring me my dolly from the table, and I saw her eyes were red. I wanted to throw myself on her neck and confess; but there was Ned, and somehow I never saw mother alone after that when I could make it convenient.

She was right in thinking me unhappy, but she little dreamed how wretched I was. Horace and Prudy, you have heard something of this before; but I must tell it now to Dotty and Fly; for that hatchet affair was a sort of crisis in my life.

You know I had not always told the truth. My imagination was active, and I liked to relate wonderful stories, to make people open their eyes. It was not wrong in the first place, for I was a mere baby. The whole world was new and wonderful to me, and one thing seemed about as strange to me as another. I could not see much difference between the real and the unreal, between the "truly true" and the make believe.

When I said my mamma had silk dresses, spangled with stars, I was thinking,--

"Perhaps she has. There's _sumpin_ in a trunk locked up, and I _guess_ it's silk dresses."

But as I grew older I learned better than to talk so. I found I must keep such wild fancies to myself, and only tell of what I knew to be true. Every time I wanted to utter a falsehood, a little voice in my soul warned me to stop.

Fly, you are old enough to know what I mean. Your eyes say so. You didn't hear that voice when you were patting round grandma's kitchen, making Ruthie's coffee-mill buzz. You were too little to hear it then.

It had nothing to say to you when you stole your mamma's "skipt," and soaked it in the wash-bowl; or when you stuffed your little cheeks with 'serves without leave, or told lies, lies, lies, as often as you opened your sweet little lips.

"You don't 'member actin' so?"

O, no; it was "so _many_ years ago!" But I was going to say you did all those dreadful things, and still you were not naughty. n.o.body thinks any the worse of you to-day for all your baby-mischief. We only laugh about it, for you did not know any better. But if you were to do such things now, what _should_ we say? Your soul-voice would tell you it was wrong, and it would be wrong.

My soul-voice talked to me, and I was learning to listen to it. I was not in the habit of telling lies; I had been hurried and frightened into this one, and now it seemed as if I could not stop saying it any more than a ball can stop rolling down hill.

It was dreadful. I had to lie there on mother's bed and think about it. I could not go out of doors, or even walk about the room. Fel had lain in her pretty blue chamber day after day, too sick to eat anything but broths and gruel; but then her conscience was easy. I wasn't sick, and could have as many nice things to eat as the rest of the family; still I was wretched.

My little friends came to see me, and were very sorry for me. I was glad to be remembered; but every time I heard the door open, I trembled for fear some one was going to say "hatchet."

And when I was alone again I would turn my face so I could watch the little clock on the mantel. It ticked with a far-away, dreamy sound, like a child talking in its sleep, and somehow it had always one story to tell, and never any other;--"You've told--a lie;--you've told--a lie."

"Well," thought I, "I know it; but stop plaguing me."

There was a pretty picture on the clock door of a little girl, with her ap.r.o.n full of flowers. It was to this little girl that I whispered, "Well, I know it; but you stop plaguing me." She went right on just the same,--"You've told--a lie; you've told--a lie." I turned my face to the wall to get rid of her, but always turned it back again, for there was a strange charm about that dreadful little girl.

I could tell you now just how she was dressed, and which way she bent her head with the wreath of flowers on it. You have noticed the old clock in Ruth's room at grandpa's? That's the one. I never see it now but its slow tick-tock calls to mind my sad experience with the hatchet.

Days pa.s.sed. I was doing my first real thinking. Up to that time I had never kept still long enough to think. It was some comfort to draw the sheet over my head, and make up faces at myself.

"You've told a lie, Mag Parlin. Just 'cause your afraid of getting scolded at for taking the hatchet. You're a little lie-girl. They don't believe anything what you say. G.o.d don't believe anything what you say. He saw you plain as could be when you cut your foot, and heard you plain as could be when you said you never touched the hatchet. And there he is up in heaven thinking about you, and not loving you at all! How can he? He don't have many such naughty girls in his whole world. If he did, there'd come a rain and rain all day, and all night, for as much as six weeks, and drown 'em all up 'cept eight good ones, and one of 'em's Fel Allen. But 'twouldn't be you, for you're a little lie-girl, and you know it yourself."

It is idle to say that children do not suffer. I believe I never felt keener anguish than that which thrilled my young heart as I lay on mother's bed, and quailed at the gaze of the little girl on the clock door.

Still no one seemed to remark my unhappiness, and I have never heard it alluded to since. Children keep their feelings to themselves much more than is commonly supposed, especially proud children. And of course I was not wretched all the time; I often forgot my trouble for hours together.

But it was not till long after I had left that room that I could bring my mind to confess my sin. I took it for granted I was ruined for life, and it was of no use to try to be good. I am afraid of tiring you, little Fly; but I want you to hear the little verse that grandpa taught me one evening about this time, as I sat on his knee:

"If we confess our sins, G.o.d is faithful and just to forgive us our sins."

I see you remember it, Dotty. Is it not sweet? "G.o.d is faithful and just." I had always before repeated my verses like a parrot, I think; but this came home to me. I wondered if my dreadful sin couldn't be washed out, so I might begin over again. I knew what confess meant; it meant to tell G.o.d you were sorry. I went right off and told him; and then I went and told father, and I found he'd been waiting all this time to forgive me. It was just wonderful! My heart danced right up. I could look people in the face again, and wasn't afraid of the girl on the clock door, and felt as peaceful and easy as if I'd never told a lie in my life--only I hated a lie so. I can't tell you how I did hate it.

"I'll never, never, never tell another as long as I breathe,"

whispered I to the blue hills, and the sky, and the fields, and the river. And I knew G.o.d heard.

I suppose it is a little remarkable, Fly; but I believe this really was my last deliberate lie. Children's resolves are not always the firmest things in the world, and my parents did not know how much mine was good for. They did not dream it had been burnt into my soul with red-hot anguish.

I have always been glad, very glad, I was allowed to suffer so much, and learn something of the preciousness of truth. It is a diamond with a white light, children. There is no other gem so clear, so pure.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE TANSY CHEESE.

You are not to suppose from this that I became a good girl the very next day. No, nor the day after. I ceased from the wickedness of telling lies, just as I had stopped pilfering sweetmeats. This was all; but it was certainly better than nothing.

I was soon able to play once more, only I could not run as fast as usual. How pleasant it was out of doors, after my long stay in the house! The flowers and trees seemed glad to see me, and I knew the hens and cows were, and old Deacon Pettibone, the horse. I resumed my old business of hunting hens' nests, though it was some weeks before I dared jump off the scaffold, and it seemed odd enough to come down on the ladder.

"I'd twice rather have it be you that had cut your foot, Fel Allen,"

said I, "for you don't want to run and jump; and folks that don't want to, might just as well have a lame foot as not."

Fel couldn't quite understand that, though it was as clear to _me_ as A B C. And after all my suffering, she wouldn't own I was as "delicate" as she. I didn't like that.

"You don't remember how many bad things have happened to me," said I, waving my thimble-finger, which had lost its tip-end in the corn-sh.e.l.ler.

"Well, Ned's going to give you a gold thimble to pay for that, and I suppose you're glad it's cut off," said Fel, who had never met with an accident in her life, and was naturally ashamed of not having a single scar or bruise on her little white body, not so much as a wart or pimple to show me. I could not help feeling my superiority sometimes, for I had been cut and burnt, and smashed and scalded, and bore the marks of it, too.

"Well, but you don't have so bad headaches as me," said Fel, recovering her self-esteem. "Your mamma never has to put mustard _pace_ on your feet, and squeeze up burdock leaves and tie 'em on your head, now, does she?"

"I don' know but she did when I was a baby; I never heard her say,"

returned I, coolly. "Folks don't think much of headaches. Polly Whiting has 'em so she can't but just see out of her eyes. But that isn't like hurting a place on you so bad your mother doesn't da.s.s do it up! I guess you'd think it _was_ something if you cut your foot most in two, and the doctor had to come and stick it together!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Squeezing Herdsgra.s.s. Page 125.]

That silenced Fel, and I had the last word, as usual.

It was already quite late in the summer. One day Fel and I were snuggled in the three-cornered seat in the trees, trying to squeeze herdsgra.s.s, to see which would be married first, when Ruthie came out at the side door to sweep off the steps.

"Maggie 'll be pleased," said she; "but how we shall miss her little mill-clapper of a tongue."

She was talking to 'Ria, who was going back and forth, doing something in the kitchen.

"Yes, we shall miss her," said 'Ria; "but I shan't have her dresses to mend. I pity poor cousin Lydia; she'll think--"

Then 'Ria's voice sounded farther off, and I did not hear what cousin Lydia would think.

"Put your head down here, Fel Allen. I've found out something,"

whispered I, starting suddenly, and tearing my "tyer" on a nail.

"I'm going to cousin Lydia Tenney's."

"How do you know?"