Lita looked at them reflectively. She had, in her time, told a great many untruths for their sake. Now that she had them here together, she rather thought it would be a good idea to tell them the truth. As she paused, her mother repeated her question even more emphatically: "Have I ever said anything to prejudice you against your father?"
"Why, of course you have, mother," she said. Her father gave a short, bitter laugh, and she turned on him. "And so have you, Pat—only not so often as mother."
"How can you be so disloyal?" cried her mother, her eyes getting larger than ever.
"How can I be anything else? You two make me disloyal."
"Remember you are speaking to your mother," said Hazlitt protectingly.
"And to you, too, Pat," answered his daughter calmly. "You've each wanted me to hate the other one, and you've both been as open about it as you dared to be. It was always like giving mother a Christmas present if I said anything disagreeable about you. And your cold gray eye would light up, Pat, if I criticized anything about her."
"Divorced or not, we are your parents, please remember," said Hazlitt.
"You don't always remember it yourselves," the girl answered. "Parents! You seem sometimes as if you were just two enemies trying to injure each other through me."
Mrs. Hazlitt was already standing, and she drew a step nearer her former husband.
"Jim," she wailed, "aren't they terrible—these young people? And I thought she loved me!"