"It began after that. She—I know that it used to be Blanche Haight then—she used to come in after I was in bed, and frighten me. She had a sheet on, and at first I thought it was a ghost, and I fainted the first time, I think; and then she used—she used to make faces and pinch me, and one time I saw her ring, and so I knew who it was."
"The cowardly brute!" muttered Peggy. "It's well for her that she's out of this school. Now, Lobelia Parkins, why, in the name of all that is feeble-minded and ridiculous, didn't you tell me this before?"
"Oh, I couldn't!" said Lobelia. "I had given you enough trouble, Peggy. And besides—"
"Well! besides what?"
"I was afraid! I was afraid she would kill me if I told."
"My goodness gracious me!" cried Peggy, bouncing on her mossy seat, till Lobelia shrank away scared and trembling. "Do you think we live in the Middle Ages, Lobelia Parkins? This is what comes of reading history; it puts all those old-fangled notions into your head, till you have no sense left. I know! You had all that stuff about Florence and Rome, and poisoning, and all that. I had it too; awful stuff, and probably two-thirds lies. History is the father of lies, you know; somebody says so somewhere."
"I—I thought it was Herodotus who was called that," Lobelia ventured, timidly.
"Perhaps it was; it's all the same."
"No, I am wrong. Herodotus was called the father of history, and then some other people said he was the father of lies; but now it has all come true, so he isn't any more!"
Lobelia, who was stupid and painstaking, proffered this lucid explanation painfully, and then gasped; it seemed a liberty for her to explain anything to anybody.