"Previous good behavior should count for much in such a case," she urged. "And our little Molly is too apt to jump at conclusions. We cannot be too careful how we accuse others of sins which they may never have committed."
I understood what they said perfectly. They never talked down to us. That was one reason we were called "old-fashioned" and "precocious" by people who had one set of words for their own use, and another for children. My parents considered, and I think rightly, that the best and most correct forms of speech should be taught to mere infants, that it is as easy to train a child to be grammatical as to let it lapse into all sorts of slovenly inaccuracies that must be unlearned at school, and in society. So, when they talked of "circumstantial evidence" I had a fair inkling of what the phrase conveyed. Preciosa was upon trial for misdemeanor, and I for backbiting.
I ate away industriously to keep from "answering back,"—a cardinal offence in nursery government. Mary 'Liza had no appetite, but she, also, remained silent, and there was moisture under her eyelids.
"We will suspend judgment—" began my father, and interrupted himself to ask—"What have you got there, Ike?"
The butler grinned from ear to ear, and broke into uncontrollable cachinnations in depositing his burden upon the floor.
"One of the stable-boys foun' it in the lof', suh."
He could say no more, and would not have been heard had he gone on, for my father roared, my mother fairly shrieked with laughter, and I went into hysterics, while Mam' Chloe and Gilbert joined in the general racket from the doorway.
An abject nondescript cringed at Mary 'Liza's feet, whimpering piteously. The devil's broth concocted by Uncle Ike, according to my receipt, was warm starch, made blue with indigo. A few red peppers were boiled in it to dissuade the cats from licking it off before it could dry. It adhered to every individual hair of Preciosa's body. She looked like an azure porcupine. I had thought, at first, of using soot as coloring matter, but the thought of the blue appealed to my sense of the congruous ridiculous. I was more than content with the result. Why a blue cat should be more mirth-provoking than a yellow may not be explicable, but the fact remains. Even Mary 'Liza shrank from contact with the absurd object, and the moisture condensed into falling drops.
"Oh, Aunt Mary! do you think it can be Preciosa? It looks like a—monster!"
With tears running down his cheeks, and his sides shaking with gusts of merriment, my father took me upon his knee, and gave me the funniest kiss I ever had—a jerky kiss, as if a bee had bobbed against my mouth.