"What rubbish you do talk!" said Mary serenely, as she shook her toothbrush on to a towel and rubbed it dry.
"As if truth were a soap!" remarked Cupid who was already in bed, reading NANA, and trying to smoke a cigarette under the blankets.
"You can't do away with truth, child."
"But why not? Who says so? It isn't a law."
"Don't try to be so sharp, Laura."
"I don't mean to, M. P.—But what IS truth, anyhow?" asked Laura.
"The Bible is truth. Can you do away with the Bible, pray?"
"Of course not. But M. P.... The Bible isn't quite all truth, you know. My father——" here she broke off in some confusion, remembering Uncle Tom.
"Well, what about him? You don't want to say, I hope, that he didn't believe in the Bible?"
Laura drove back the: "Of course not!" that was all but over her lips. "Well, not exactly," she said, and grew very red. "But you KNOW, M. P., whales don't have big enough throats ever to have swallowed Jonah."