“‘That naughty Jean!’ I ventured to say, growing bolder.
“‘Hush, my dear,’ said grandma, ‘I will talk to Jean. I dare say she did not mean to push you so hard.’”
“But I should think, mamma,” broke in Eunice, “that you would have thought that Jean would come in any minute, and say she hadn’t done it at all.”
“Of course, I was a very silly little girl not to think of that,” answered mamma, “but it shows that I wasn’t used to deceiving. I never thought of the consequences. Somehow, too, by that time, I felt quite certain that I was telling the exact truth, and I entirely forgot that Jean would soon be in to say she hadn’t touched me.
“Well, only a few minutes after that, Jean came into the house, and ran quickly upstairs to the nursery. I was still running around in my little white petticoat and under-waist, while mother went to the clothes-press, to get a dress for me. You know that big carved wardrobe that still stands by grandma’s door in the hall? The one your grandpa brought home in one of his voyages? Well, it was that very one. Grandma came back, as Jean came in singing. She looked so entirely unconcerned that I think mother was surprised.
“‘Jean,’ she said, coming in and holding out her hand to her, ‘how could you do such a naughty thing as to push your little sister so hard that she fell off the box, and rolled down the hill?’
“I can see your look of surprise now, Jean,” said mamma, turning to auntie, “as you stopped short and said, ‘Pushed her off the box? why, I didn’t! she jumped off herself.’
“Grandma looked from one to the other of us.
“‘What is this?’ she said. ‘One or the other of you is telling me what isn’t true.’ I shall never forget her look of grieved surprise. It must have been difficult for her to decide which was the guilty one, at first, for I felt that I must stick to what I had said. All my anger came back, and I jumped up and down, screaming, ‘you pushed me off, Jean Maxwell! you pushed me off.’
“‘Mother, I didn’t!’ Jean said. ‘Please believe me, for you know I wouldn’t do such a thing.’ Really, it would have been much more like me, for I had a quick temper, and I was always losing it.