A few mornings after the story telling in the garden, as Miss King was passing along the passage on her way down to breakfast, she overheard tumultuous sounds from the direction of the nursery. She stopped to listen. Various little voices were to be distinguished raised much higher than their wont, and among them, now and then, Martin's rather anxious tones as if entreating the children to listen to her advice.
"I don't care," were among the first words Cousin Magdalen made out clearly, "there isn't two trues, and what I'm telling is real true true, as true as true."
The speaker was Hoodie. Then came the answer from Maudie.
"Hoodie, how can you?" she said in a voice of real distress. "I think it's dreadful to tell stories, and to keep on saying they're true when you know they're not. It wouldn't have mattered if you had explained it was a sort of fairy story like what Cousin Magdalen told us the other day, for of course that wasn't true either, only in a way it was."
"And Hoodie didn't usplain a bit, not one bit," said Duke virtuously. "Her keeped on saying it were as true as true."
"And we is too little to under'tand, isn't we?" put in Hec. "If Hoodie had toldened us she was in fun——"
"But I wasn't in fun, you ugly, naughty, ugly boy," retorted Hoodie, by this time most evidently losing her temper. "And if peoples 'zinks so much about trues, they shouldn't vant me to say what isn't true about being in fun when I wasn't in fun. The moon does——"
A choky sound was now heard, caused by Maudie's putting her hand over her sister's mouth.
"Hoodie, you're not to say that again," she exclaimed, no doubt with the best intention, but with an unfortunate result. Hoodie turned upon her like a little wild cat, and was in the act of slapping her vigorously when Miss King hurried into the room.
"Hoodie!" she said reproachfully.