“A man did tell me I couldn’t come through this way,” she confessed.
“Yet he allowed you to do so?” There was a queer note beneath the courtesy.
Trix’s ear, catching the note, found it almost repellant.
“It wasn’t his fault,” she declared. “I came. I said, ‘Isn’t there someone at the gate?’ And while he turned to look, I ran. At least,—” a gleam of laughter sprang to her eyes—“I sneezed first, so it sounded like ‘There’s somebody at the gate.’ So he thought there was really. It—it was rather mean of me.”
“What you might call an acted lie,” suggested the man.
Trix looked conscience-stricken, contrite.
“I suppose it was,” she admitted in a very small voice. “But it was the cows. Only I think they were bulls. I am so frightened of cows. I couldn’t go back. And he wasn’t going to let me through. It wasn’t his fault a bit, it wasn’t really. I know I told a—a kind of lie.” She sighed heavily.
“You did,” said the man.
Again Trix sighed.
“I’d never make a martyr, would I? Only”—a degree more hopefully—“A sneeze isn’t quite like denying real things, things that matter, is it?” This last was spoken distinctly appealingly.