“What on earth do you s'pose put such a lie into his head?”
“It isn't all a lie, Jonathan.”
The boy laid down his knife and fork, and stared at her aghast.
“You don't mean you was over there?” he exclaimed.
Desire's face was crimson to the roots of her hair. She bowed her head.
“Wh-a-a-t!” said Jonathan, in a tone of utter disgust, tempered only by a remnant of incredulity.
“I didn't go on my knees to him,” said Desire faintly.
“Oh, you didn't, didn't you? I believe you did,” said the boy slowly, with an accent of ineffable scorn, rising to his feet and drawing away from his sister, as she seemed about to approach him.
Before the lad of sixteen, his elder sister, who had carried him in her arms as a baby, and been his teacher as a boy, stood like a culprit, quite abject. Finally she said:
“I didn't do it for myself. I did it for Aunt Lucy. The doctor said it would kill her if she was kept awake another night, and there was no other way to stop the mob. And so I did it.”