"Yes, mother."
"Did you climb up into my closet one day?"
I hung my head.
"Rhoda, when you knew that you had only to ask for mother to give them to you, why did you take away my little dolls?"
"But I did not take them," I cried, in surprise. "I only looked at them. Was I very bad, mother?"
"You didn't take them? Think what you are saying, Rhoda."
"I did not take them," I protested, breaking into tears, for though I was bad, I knew that I was not that bad.
I could see that she did not believe me. She sighed in a way that I had never heard my mother sigh before, and set me down on the floor beside her. Then she took me by the hand, and we made a very solemn pilgrimage up the stairs, and through her room into the one which was my own, straight up into the corner where my doll-house stood. She opened the little door, and motioned me to look in. The bride and groom were leaning stiffly side by side against the sofa in the parlor! They stared back at me with scorn on their sugar faces, and there was, also, something accusing in their expression, as if they were saying, "Little girl, how do we come here?" Still I would not confess. I had not taken them. I had wanted them very much, but now I did not want them at all. I should have liked to smash their sugar heads, for it was their fault. They had done it themselves, stepping down from their high shelf in the middle of the night. They were tired of living tied up in a box, and wanted my doll-house to set up housekeeping in. They had done it themselves just to plague me. There was no other way to explain it.
"What does she say?" grandmother asked, creeping in behind us.
"Not the truth!" my mother cried. "I should never have suspected my child of lying and stealing! But Lily-Ann says it is not the first time!"