“Child, yourself. I mean fire right into the middle of the thing, and ‘honest Injun’, I did do it with my eyes shut. I wonder if that ain’t the rightest way to sharpshoot, anyway. The rest of you couldn’t hit it anywheres near, with your eyes open. What say?”
Molly yawned and stretched herself luxuriously, and Helena remarked:
“Molly, you make me think of a Persian kitten! She does just that when she feels particularly good.”
“Well, I ought to feel good. I didn’t kill Wun Sing. I just made a hole in his old purple blouse and I can give him another new one. If I can find one like it, and have money enough, and—and other things. If I had shot him instead of his clothes what would they have done to me? Would I have been hung by the neck till you are dead and the Lord have mercy on your soul? Would I?”
“Oh! Molly, how horrible and how wicked! That’s swearing!” cried indignant Dorothy.
“Well, I like that! I mean I don’t! I never swore a swore in my life and you’re horrid, just horrid, Dorothy Calvert, to say so,” retorted Molly, suddenly sitting up and flashing a look of scorn at her beloved chum.
“It was really swearing, you know, though you didn’t mean it.”
“It’s what the Judge says—my poor father’s one—when a man is condemned to death.”
“Aunt Betty says that any taking of the Lord’s name in vain is swearing and—”