“I do not,” said Mahala.
“Well, I do,” said Mahlon. “It came from the border of one of your mother’s flower beds, just outside the parlour window. It was thrown from that direction. Some one who had not been invited to the party was watching it through the parlour window. Some one who doesn’t like Junior Moreland to think that you are his girl, threw the brick. Now, Mahala, women, even little girls of fourteen, are not sufficiently sophisticated to be in the first year of high school and at the same time so ignorant that they do not know which boy of their acquaintance is enough interested in them to risk taking the life of another boy who is guilty of no very great indiscretion.”
“That all depends on the boy,” said Mahala. “If he is the son of the rich banker, it’s ‘no great indiscretion;’ if it had been the son of—say the washerwoman, for example, right now you’d be out trying to kill him.”
“And I very probably should succeed in so far as I cared to go in such a premise,” said Mahlon promptly.
“That’s exactly what I thought,” said Mahala.
Slipping from his knee and walking to her dresser, she began very carefully unpinning the little wreath of silver-blue leaves that bound her hair.
“I am waiting,” said Mahlon with all the dignity of which he was capable—and he was capable of a high degree of really impressive dignity. No one can practise anything hourly for fifty years and not attain a high degree of excellence.
Mahala turned to her father, both hands still occupied with the wreath.
“Papa,” she said very quietly, “you just got through saying that I never told you a lie. Do you think it would be any great achievement on your part if you should force me to tell you one right now?”
“I am not asking for a lie!” thundered Mahlon. “I demand that you tell me the truth!”