“O Emily! I would not tell such a wicked story to save my life!” rejoined Jessie.
“Well, I would; I’ve got out of many a bad scrape, by fixing up some such story as that. And it is so natural, you see, for a big dog to bounce against a glass which is so near the floor as this one, that your folks will easily believe it.”
“O Emily! Emily! How can you talk so?” said Jessie, gazing at her cousin with an expression of pity and surprise.
“She talks just right,” said Charlie. “It’s a first-rate story, and will get us out of the scrape nicely. Bravo, Emily! I won’t hit you again for ever so long.”
Jessie was horror-struck to hear her cousins talk in this cool and hardened manner. To her mind a lie was of all things the most mean and wicked. She had just shown her hatred of it, by her penitence for merely acting a lie in fun. But this proposal to tell a downright lie, for the purpose of escaping the consequences of an unlucky accident, looked like asking her to commit a very shocking crime. She felt a shudder creep over her, and shrinking from her cousins, as if they had been deadly serpents, she pushed her chair back a yard or two, and said:
“Emily, I would die before I would tell such a lie. I hope you won’t think of doing it. It’s so wicked, Emily. If you could deceive my pa and ma, you couldn’t deceive God, who saw Charlie break the mirror. Don’t do it, Emily, please don’t?”
“We will do it too, and if you peach on us, we’ll say it was your fault that Rover did it. How will you like that, Miss Jessie!” said Charlie.
“I will tell my father the exact truth about it,” said Jessie, rising to her feet.
“Very well, Miss Tell Tale,” retorted Emily. “We’ll fix you then. Charlie and I will say that you threw the ottoman against the mirror, and broke it yourself, won’t we, Charlie?”
“Yes, and they will believe both of us, because they will think you are lying to escape being whipped for your fault. Ah! ah! Miss Jessie, we’ll fix you, see if we don’t!” and Charlie held up his finger, and grinned in his cousin’s face.