"You nor I can't judge of that," mother said.
"If father was to speak to people, and advertise," I said—feeling that I must talk, or mother would ask again the question I hadn't answered.
"Advertise for the thief to bring back stolen goods!" Mother gave a little laugh. "Kitty, have you taken leave of your senses?" says she.
"I do hate the thought of a policeman coming," I said.
"Maybe it's not what we would have chosen," said she. "But if I'm willing, you needn't worry. Don't you think father knows best how to manage?"
We didn't go on talking, and mother let alone the question she had put; but I knew she hadn't forgotten it.
At family prayers that evening father read the chapter in Acts about Ananias and Sapphira: not by choice, for it came in regular order. I couldn't help shivering as I listened; and when we got up from prayers, father said—
"That's a fearful chapter, isn't it? I always think so, every time I read it. Shows so plain what God thinks of untruth. And it wasn't even as if Ananias had told a downright outspoken lie. It was just shuffling and deceiving."
I thought over those words of father's, lying in bed, and pictured the awful end of husband and wife, struck dead in the very act and word of falsehood. I couldn't bear to remember the untruths I had already been led into, and I made up my mind that I would not say another word that wasn't true. I would only refuse to answer, and take the consequences.
But it is no easy matter, if one steps down into evil, to keep one's self from going farther than just a certain point.