"You were fighting," he said sternly, and she started in surprise, but made no answer. "Weren't you?"
"No."
"What?"
"No, sir."
"Tabitha Catt!" he exclaimed in astonishment. "Go to your room. No melon tonight for a girl who will tell such a deliberate lie."
Tabitha rose instantly, seized her draggled belongings and started for her door, but paused on the threshold to say, "I hit him only once. That ain't fighting, is it? I wanted to trounce him good; he deserved it."
Her door shut with an emphatic bang, and the weary, perplexed, belligerent little girl crept into bed to sob herself to sleep.
Breakfast was over, the dishes all cleared away and the kitchen deserted when she awoke the next morning; but on the table stood a tray on which her lunch was set forth, and beside it lay a note from Aunt Maria saying that a sick neighbor had sent for her and she would be gone for some time.
Tabitha took a survey of the premises. Tom was at the office, the father nowhere in sight. Where was the watermelon? Surely three people couldn't have eaten all of it in one meal! Oh, there it was in the cooler and not even cut. She stood contemplating it for a moment, then with a deft motion rolled it out on the floor. It was so heavy she could scarcely lift it. She looked around for something to assist her, and her eye fell upon an empty flour-sack which Aunt Maria had left on top of the barrel, evidently intending to wash it out. Seizing this, she spread it open beside the melon, rolled the great green ball inside, and dragged the trophy out of doors up the rocky path to the road and out of sight among the boulders. There she stood and surveyed the bag while she wrestled with herself.
"He said I lied, and I didn't. It wasn't a fight, for Jerome never hit me at all. It takes two to make a fight. Miss Brooks says so. He's always telling me I lie. He never said I couldn't have some melon today. Maybe if I had left it alone he would have given me some. Perhaps I'd better take it back."