“If you didn’t do anything wrong, what did you do?” said the old lady, almost at her wits’ end.
“I don’t like telling things that are not going to be believed. It’s like washing your face with ink!”
“I will try to believe you.”
“Then I will tell you; for you speak the truth, ma’am, and so, perhaps, will be able to believe the truth!”
“How do you know I speak the truth?”
“Because you didn’t say, ‘I will believe you.’ Nobody can be sure of doing that. But you can be sure of trying; and you said, ‘I will try to believe you.’”
“Tell me all about it then.”
“I will, ma’am.—The policeman came in the middle of the night when we were asleep, and took us all away, because we were in a house that was not ours.”
“Whose was it then?”
“Nobody knew. It was what they call in chancery. There was nobody in it but moths and flies and spiders and rats;—though I think the rats only came to eat baby.”