Gentle Mrs. Morden's face was pale as she turned her startled eyes on her visitor.
"Who else? Don't you think it a disgrace for a girl to use tobacco? and that's what Sil does, and goes and buys a spittoon before the whole town! I'd tobacco her! But everybody knows it by this time, and whether she gives it up or not, people will keep on thinking she uses it. You always did give that girl too much head, I've told you so time and again, and now you see you'd better have taken my advice."
Mrs. Morden had regained her calmness by this time.
"There is certainly some mistake," she said, coolly. "I will ask Silvia about it when she comes in."
"You'll find it no mistake," said her visitor. "At least half-a-dozen people were in Morris's this evening when she asked for the spittoon, and then got mad with the clerk about something."
The explanation Silvia was compelled to make that evening, though it acquitted her of the first charge, left a most painful impression upon her mother that the habit of falsehood had grown upon her daughter.
"I will not add to your punishment by re-proof," she said, gravely, "because I foresee the mortification that this is going to bring to you. No explanation will convince half the gossips in town that you have not the filthy habit of using tobacco, and the story will cling to you for years."
"That's harsh and unjust!" Silvia cried, hotly. "It was a mistake anybody might have made."
"Yes, anybody who pretends to know what you are ignorant of. There is a strong likeness in the family of lies, and it is neither hard nor unjust that we should be punished for them. Your humiliation I hope may prove a salutary lesson."
It did. Silvia is rarely tempted now to her old pretences of superior knowledge. The cuspadore story brought her such pain and mortifition that the scars remain yet.