"Well, Jake, it was this here way. That there book belonged to ME and Tillie lent it off of me. That's how! Ain't Tillie?"
Mr. Getz stared in stupefied wonder, while Mrs. Getz, too, looked on with a dull interest, as she leaned her back against the sink and dried her hands upon her apron.
As for Tillie, a great throb of relief thrilled through her as she heard the doctor utter this Napoleonic lie—only to be followed the next instant by an overwhelming sense of her own wickedness in thus conniving with fraud. Abysses of iniquity seemed to yawn at her feet, and she gazed with horror into their black depths. How could she ever again hold up her head.
But—Miss Margaret, at least, was safe from the School Board's wrath and indignation, and how unimportant, compared with that, was her own soul's salvation!
"Why didn't Tillie say it was yourn?" Mr. Getz presently found voice to ask.
"I tole her if she left it get put out I am addicted to novel readin'," said the doctor glibly, and with evident relish, "it might spoil my practice some. And Tillie she's that kind-hearted she was sorry far me!"
"And so you put her up to say it was Elviny's! You put her up to tell lies to her pop!"
"Well, I never thought you 'd foller it up any, Jake, and try to get ELVINY into trouble."
"Doc, I always knowed you was a blasPHEmer and that you didn't have no religion. But I thought you had anyhow morals. And I didn't think, now, you was a coward that way, to get behind a child and lie out of your own evil deeds!"
"I'm that much a coward and a blasPHEmer, Jake, that I 'm goin' to add the cost of that there book of mine where you burnt up, to your doctor's bill, unlest you pass me your promise you 'll drop this here subjec' and not bother Tillie with it no more."