The reply wasn't satisfactory. Uncle George frowned and Aunt Amelia smiled. The smile wasn't the kind she was in the habit of bestowing upon Ella. It was the sort that froze the blood in Marian's veins. She sank in a miserable little heap upon the floor and cried and cried.
"Reform school is the place for children who steal and lie," said Aunt Amelia.
Uncle George tried to make the child confess, but his efforts were vain. She would not. Threats were powerless. The more frightened Marian became the more vehemently she denied her guilt. Although it was Ella's birthday, and shouts of laughter could be heard from the sitting-room, Aunt Amelia produced a certain strap Marian was familiar with through past experience. "Spare the rod, spoil the child," was Mrs. St. Claire's favorite motto so far as her husband's small relative was concerned.
"You can whip me till I die," sobbed Marian when she saw the strap, "but I can't say I took the cookies, because I didn't. How can I say I did, when I didn't?" Nor could Aunt Amelia nor Uncle George compel the child to say anything different.
"You can whip me till I die," she insisted over and over, "but I can't say I took those cookies," and they finally believed her.
"Go to bed," commanded Aunt Amelia. "I don't want to see a child who could die easier than she could tell the truth. Go!"
A smothered sob caught Marian's ear. Lala was crying; and because Lala cried and was soon after found in Marian's room trying to quiet her, she was sent away the next day. Tilly was her successor. Before she had been in the house a week, she openly befriended Marian. "Poor little thing," she said, "if you had stolen a barrel of cookies from a baker you wouldn't have deserved half of the punishment you get. There isn't anything left they can do to you, is there?"
"Yes, they can send me to the reform school," was the reply, "and, oh, dear, I'm afraid to go. What will become of me?"
"If I were you," Tilly advised, "and I took the cookies, I would own up. They can't any more than kill you and I guess they'll do that anyway."