"Well, every time the doctor came to see me, he laughed and asked me how I cut my foot."
"'Just the same as I did in the first place, you know,' said I. 'I don't know nothing about it, only I never touched the hatchet!'"
"'Well,' he would answer, 'you remember the old saying, A lie well stuck to, is better than the truth wavering.'"
"I didn't know what that meant, but he laughed so that I knew he was making sport of me. I knew nobody believed me. The hatchet had been found red with blood, and mother looked, O, so sad! but I had told that falsehood so many times that it did seem as if I hadn't any courage left to tell the truth. It had grown to be very easy to keep saying, I never touched the hatchet.'"
"Makes me think of that play, 'My father's lost his hatchet,'" whispered Susy to Grace.
"Every one tried to amuse me while I was sick, but there was always a thorn in my pillow."
"A thorn?" said Prudy.
"Not a real thorn, dear. I mean I had told a wrong story, and I couldn't feel happy."
Here Susy turned away her head and looked out of the window, though she saw nothing there but grandpa coming in from the garden with a watering-pot.
"Whenever father looked at me, I felt just as if he was thinking, 'Margaret doesn't tell the truth;' and when mother spoke my name quick, I was afraid she was going to say something about the hatchet."