But as I grew older I learned better than to talk so. I found I must keep such wild fancies to myself, and only tell of what I knew to be true. Every time I wanted to utter a falsehood, a little voice in my soul warned me to stop.
Fly, you are old enough to know what I mean. Your eyes say so. You didn't hear that voice when you were patting round grandma's kitchen, making Ruthie's coffee-mill buzz. You were too little to hear it then. It had nothing to say to you when you stole your mamma's "skipt," and soaked it in the wash-bowl; or when you stuffed your little cheeks with 'serves without leave, or told lies, lies, lies, as often as you opened your sweet little lips.
"You don't 'member actin' so?"
O, no; it was "so many years ago!" But I was going to say you did all those dreadful things, and still you were not naughty. Nobody thinks any the worse of you to-day for all your baby-mischief. We only laugh about it, for you did not know any better. But if you were to do such things now, what should we say? Your soul-voice would tell you it was wrong, and it would be wrong.
My soul-voice talked to me, and I was learning to listen to it. I was not in the habit of telling lies; I had been hurried and frightened into this one, and now it seemed as if I could not stop saying it any more than a ball can stop rolling down hill.
It was dreadful. I had to lie there on mother's bed and think about it. I could not go out of doors, or even walk about the room. Fel had lain in her pretty blue chamber day after day, too sick to eat anything but broths and gruel; but then her conscience was easy. I wasn't sick, and could have as many nice things to eat as the rest of the family; still I was wretched.
My little friends came to see me, and were very sorry for me. I was glad to be remembered; but every time I heard the door open, I trembled for fear some one was going to say "hatchet."
And when I was alone again I would turn my face so I could watch the little clock on the mantel. It ticked with a far-away, dreamy sound, like a child talking in its sleep, and somehow it had always one story to tell, and never any other;—"You've told—a lie;—you've told—a lie."
"Well," thought I, "I know it; but stop plaguing me."
There was a pretty picture on the clock door of a little girl, with her apron full of flowers. It was to this little girl that I whispered, "Well, I know it; but you stop plaguing me." She went right on just the same,—"You've told—a lie; you've told—a lie." I turned my face to the wall to get rid of her, but always turned it back again, for there was a strange charm about that dreadful little girl. I could tell you now just how she was dressed, and which way she bent her head with the wreath of flowers on it. You have noticed the old clock in Ruth's room at grandpa's? That's the one. I never see it now but its slow tick-tock calls to mind my sad experience with the hatchet.