“My father knows I wouldn’t tell a lie,” replied Jessie firmly; “and I do hope you won’t, for oh! it is so wicked, and so mean. Nobody loves, trusts, or believes a liar. Please Charlie, please Emily, let me tell pa just how it happened. He won’t be very angry. I know he won’t. But if he is, I will tell him to whip me, instead of scolding Charlie.”
Charlie winced under this noble speech of Jessie’s, and for a moment was inclined to yield. But his sister’s temper was roused, and she urged him to stick to her, and to say that Jessie threw the ottoman, “and now,” said she, “I will go and tell my aunt directly.”
Jessie turned pale; not with fear for herself, but because she shrank from a conflict with her cousins, in her mother’s presence. Fortunately, a happy thought came into her mind, and rising, she whispered to herself, “Yes, I will go and ask Uncle Morris to come in.” And Jessie glided into the library.
Her uncle was not there. He had left it an hour before, and feeling slightly dozy had gone into the back parlor to catch a little nap on the sofa. This parlor was separated from the one in which the children had been playing only by folding-doors. Their noise at blind-man’s-buff, had roused him from his nap, and he had heard all that afterwards passed between them. When, therefore, Emily went to tell Mrs. Carlton her great lie, he thought it was time for him to interfere. So he passed round by the hall into the front parlor, just as Jessie with her sad face was returning from the library.
“Oh, I’m so glad you are here, Uncle Morris!” exclaimed Jessie, her face brightening and growing much shorter. “Please come into the parlor.”
The good old man kissed his niece with even unusual tenderness, and led her into the parlor.
“Hoity toity!” cried he, as he looked on the fragments of the broken mirror. “Somebody’s been playing the mischief here. What’s been the matter?”
“Jessie did it!” said Charlie, with a dogged air.
“Yes, sir! Jessie threw an ottoman at me, and it struck the mirror. Didn’t she, Charlie?” said Emily, coming up to Uncle Morris, with Mrs. Carlton behind her.
“Yes, Jessie did it, and no mistake!” said Charlie, boldly.