“I don’t know what a bonny habble is from Adam,” said Bud, “but I bet the Doc wasn’t everything: there was that prayer, you know.”
“Eh?” exclaimed her uncle sharply.
“Oh, I heard you, Uncle Dan,” said Bud, with a sly look up at him. “I wasn’t sleeping really that night, and I was awful liable to have tickled you on the bald bit of your head. I never saw it before. I could have done it easily if it wasn’t that I was so tired; and my breath was so sticky that I had to keep on yanking it, just; and you were so solemn and used such dre’ffle big words. I didn’t tickle you, but I thought I’d help you pray, and so I kept my eyes shut and said a bit myself. Say, I want to tell you something,”—she stammered, with a shaking lip. “I felt real mean when you talked about a sinless child; of course you didn’t know, but it was—it wasn’t true. I know why I was taken ill: it was a punishment for telling fibs to Kate. I was mighty frightened that I’d die before I had a chance to tell you.”
“Fibs!” said Mr Dyce seriously. “That’s bad. And I’m loth to think it of you, for it’s the only sin that does not run in the family, and the one I most abominate.”
Bell stopped her knitting, quite distressed, and the child lost her new-come bloom. “I didn’t mean it for fibs,” she said, “and it wasn’t anything I said, but a thing I did when I was being Winifred Wallace. Kate wanted me to write a letter—”
“Who to?” demanded Auntie Bell.
“It was to—it was to—oh, I daren’t tell you,” said Bud, distressed. “It wouldn’t be fair, and maybe she’ll tell you herself, if you ask her. Anyhow I wrote the letter for her, and seeing she wasn’t getting any answer to it, and was just looney for one, and I was mighty keen myself, I turned Winny on, and wrote one. I went out and posted it that dre’ffle wet night you had the party, and I never let on to Kate, so she took it for a really really letter from the person we sent the other one to. I got soaked going to the post-office, and that’s where I guess God began to play His hand. Jim said the Almighty held a royal flush every blessed time; but that’s card talk, I don’t know what it means, ’cept that Jim said it when the ‘Span of Life’ manager skipped with the boodle—lit out with the cash, I mean, and the company had to walk home from Kalamazoo on the railroad ties.”
“Mercy on us! I never heard a word of it,” cried Miss Bell. “This’ll be a warning! People that have bairns to manage shouldn’t be giving parties; it was the only night since ever you came here that we never put you to your bed. Did Kate not change your clothes when you came in wet?”
“She didn’t know I was out, for that would have spoiled everything, ’cause she’d have asked me what I was doing out, and I’d have had to tell her, for I can’t fib that kind of fib. When I came in all soaking, I took a teeny-weeny loan of Uncle’s tartan rug, and played to Kate I was Helen Macgregor, and Kate went into spasms, and didn’t notice anything till my clothes were dry. Was it very very naughty of me?”
“It was indeed! It was worse than naughty, it was silly,” said her Uncle Dan, remembering all the prank had cost them.