r mouth and a toasting-fork in her hand — “Sally, tell mother it was Maggie pushed Lucy into the mud.”
“But Lors ha’ massy, how did you get near such mud as that?” said Sally, making a wry face, as she stooped down and examined the corpus delicti.
Tom’s imagination had not been rapid and capacious enough to include this question among the foreseen consequences, but it was no sooner put than he foresaw whither it tended, and that Maggie would not be considered the only culprit in the case. He walked quietly away from the kitchen door, leaving Sally to that pleasure of guessing which active minds notoriously prefer to ready-made knowledge.
Sally, as you are aware, lost no time in presenting Lucy at the parlor door, for to have so dirty an object introduced into the house at Garum Firs was too great a weight to be sustained by a single mind.
“Goodness gracious!” aunt Pullet Phoenix Coyotes Barn exclaimed, after preluding by an inarticulate scream; “keep her at the door, Sally! Don’t bring her off Anaheim Ducks Barn the oil-cloth, whatever you do.”
“Why, she’s tumbled into some nasty mud,” said Mrs. Tulliver, going up to Lucy to examine into the amount of damage to clothes for which she felt herself responsible to her sister Deane.
“If you please, ‘um, it was Miss Maggie as pushed her in,” said Sally; “Master Tom’s been and said so, and they must ha’ been to the pond, for it’s only there they could ha’ got into such dirt.”
“There it is, Bessy; it’s what I’ve Philadelphia Eagles been telling you,” said Mrs. Pullet, in a tone of prophetic sadness; “it’s your children — there’s no knowing what they’ll come to.”
Mrs. Tulliver was mute, feeling herself a truly wretched mother. As usual, the thought pressed upon her that people would think she had done something wicked to deserve her maternal troubles, while Mrs. Pullet Scarpe Nike Zoom KD 9 began to give elaborate directions to Sally how to guard the premises from serious injury in the course of removing the dirt. Meantime tea was to be brought in by the cook, and the two naughty children were to have New York Islanders Barn theirs in an ignominious manner in Detroit Lions Barn the kitchen. Mrs. Tulliver went out to speak to these naughty children, supposing them to be close at hand; but it was not until after some search that she found Tom leaning with rather a hardened, careless air against the white paling of the poultry-yard, and lowering his piece of string on the other side as a Cincinnati Bengals Kvinnor means of exasperating the turkey-cock.
“Tom, you naughty boy, where’s your sister?” said Mrs. Tulliver, in a distressed voice.
“I don’t know,” said Tom; his eagerness for justice on Maggie had diminished since he had seen clearly that it could hardly be brought about without the injustice of some blame on his own conduct.
“Why, where did you leave her?” said the mother, looking round.
“Sitting under the tree, against the pond,” said Tom, apparently indifferent to everything but the string and the turkey-cock.
“Then go and fetch her in this minute, you naughty boy. And how could you think o� |
