“My dear, we must.”
Meantime Jim and Content Adams were out in the garden. Jim had gone to Content's door and tapped and called out, rather rudely: “Content, I say, put on your hat and come along out in the garden. I've got something to tell you.”
“Don't want to,” protested Content's little voice, faintly.
“You come right along.”
And Content came along. She was an obedient child, and she liked Jim, although she stood much in awe of him. She followed him into the garden back of the rectory, and they sat down on the bench beneath the weeping willow. The minute they were seated Jim began to talk.
“Now,” said he, “I want to know.”
Content glanced up at him, then looked down and turned pale.
“I want to know, honest Injun,” said Jim, “what you are telling such awful whoppers about your old big sister Solly for?”
Content was silent. This time she did not smile, a tear trickled out of her right eye and ran over the pale cheek.
“Because you know,” said Jim, observant of the tear, but ruthless, “that you haven't any big sister Solly, and never did have. You are getting us all in an awful mess over it, and father is rector here, and mother is his wife, and I am his son, and you are his niece, and it is downright mean. Why do you tell such whoppers? Out with it!”