'No,' he said, 'I'm afraid not.'
'Then Aunt Annie told a whopper,' announced Prudence Jane with satisfaction.
'We should not malign the absent,' said the Reverend Mr. Sanders. 'And that being the case, suppose you go up at this point, Imogen, and tell your Aunt Annie that I am here.'
Prudence Jane wondered what 'maligning the absent' was. She distrusted gentlemen who made cryptic remarks of this sort. It was a way her brother Horace had. She saw that the moment had now arrived to test Aunt Annie's theory about ministers and fibs!
'She can't come down,' she replied.
'Can't come down?' repeated the minister.
'No,' said Prudence Jane, looking at him out of the depths of her forget-me-not eyes, 'she's washed her hair.'
'Oh,' said the Reverend Mr. Sanders, in the tone of one who finds the conversation getting definitely beyond him.
At this moment an apparition with a round face and a pair of corduroy shoulders suddenly darkened the open window.
'A lie is an a-bom-i-na-tion un-to the Lord,' it sang; and, catching sight of the clerical back, vanished hastily.