“I had, last night,” responded the girl, “so far as our suite was concerned. I lay there and listened to you snoring. You went to sleep before you had been in bed ten minutes. And you never stopped snoring one moment till Macduff began to howl so horribly. Then you jumped up and—”
“People always seem to think there’s something degrading about a snore,” commented Miss Gregg. “Personally, I like to have people snore. (As long as they do it out of earshot from me.) There’s something honest and wholesome about snoring. Just as there is in a hearty appetite. I’ve no patience with finicky eaters and noiseless sleepers. There’s something so disgustingly superior about them! Now when I eat or sleep—”
“Aunt Hester!” Doris dragged her back from the safety isles of philosophy to the facts of the moment. “You were sound asleep in your own bed all night—till the dog waked us. But you told the chief you didn’t sleep at all and you told him that awful rigmarole about hiding behind lowboys and—”
“Highboys, dear,” corrected the old lady. “Highboys. Or, to be accurate, one highboy and one desk. A highboy and a lowboy are two very different articles of furniture, as you ought to know by this time. Now, that table out in the hall there is a low—”
“You told him all that story,” Doris drove on remorselessly, “when not one single syllable of it was true. Auntie!”
“My dear,” demanded Miss Gregg, evasion falling from her as she came at last to bay, “would you rather have had me tell one small lie or have Thaxton Vail lose one large life? Circumstantial evidence—his own knife and his absence from the house at just the critical time and all that—and Clive Creede’s rank idiocy in blabbing the very worst things he could have blabbed—all that would have sent Thax to prison without bail to wait his trial. And, ten to one, it would have convicted him. I was thinking of that when my inspiration came. Direct from On High, as I shall always believe. And I spoke up. Then my own niece tries to blame me for saving him! Gratitude is a—”
“But, Auntie!” protested the confused Doris. “Surely you could have told the story without taking oath on it. Perjury is a terrible thing. Even to save a life. Oh, how could you?”
“I didn’t commit perjury,” stoutly denied Miss Gregg. “I did nothing of the kind. I didn’t take any oath at all. Not one.”
“You laid your hands on the Bible,” insisted Doris. “You brought it in from the lectern. And you laid both hands on it when you testified. You said you did it in case your bare word should be doubted. You laid your dear wicked hands on it and—”
“On what?” challenged Miss Gregg, sullenly.