I
'A lie's an abomination unto the Lord a hundred and twenty-four, a lie's
an abomination unto the Lord a hundred and twenty-five, a lie's an
abomination unto the Lord a hundred and twenty-six,' recited Prudence
Jane, and paused.
'Go on,' said Aunt Annie, looking up from her sewing and fixing her eyes
severely on the small blue back across the room.
Prudence Jane, with the heels of her little ankle-ties together and her
hands clasped tightly behind her, was standing in the corner, saying
what was known in the family as her punish-sentence. Whenever she had
been unusually naughty she had to say one four hundred times up in Aunt
Annie's room. It was, no doubt, a silly sort of punishment, but it was
one that Prudence Jane strongly objected to--and that, after all, is the
essence of a punishment. Prudence Jane had seven teasing, mimicking
brothers, and whenever one of them caught her saying a punish-sentence
it was days before she heard the last of it. Already in the garden below
there was audible a shrill voice singing, 'A _lie_ is an
a_bom_-i-_na_-tion _un_-to the _Lord_,' to the tune of 'Has anybody here
seen Kelly?' And out of the corner of her eye, which was supposed to be
fastened on the rosebuds of Aunt Annie's wall-paper, Prudence Jane could
see an impudent little person in corduroys, straddling the gravel walk
and squinting up at the window.
'Is "a lie's an abomination" in the Bible?' inquired Prudence Jane.
'Yes,' said Aunt Annie, 'go on.'
'Where?' demanded Prudence Jane.
'Where?' repeated Aunt Annie a little blankly. 'Why--why--in the middle
of the Bible. Don't you listen to the minister, Prudence Jane?'
'The middle of the minister's Bible?' pursued Prudence Jane.
'Yes, of course,' said Aunt Annie, 'Prudence Jane, if you don't go on at
once I shall have you say it five hundred times.
'A lie's an abomination unto the Lord a hundred and twenty-seven,'
resumed Prudence Jane hastily.
Prudence Jane's sentences varied from day to day, it being Aunt Annie's
idea to fit the sentence to the crime whenever possible. Thus, for being
late to school it was, naturally, 'Procrastination is the thief of
time.' While for telling Lena, the cook, that Uncle Arthur had said she
was more of a lady than Aunt Annie, the sentence had been nothing less
than, 'Truth crushed to earth will rise again.'
This particular fib had been very disastrous in its consequences. We
will not dwell upon them here. They make a story in themselves. Suffice
it to say that there was no possible excuse for Prudence Jane.
It was otherwise with the fib for which she was this morning serving a
sentence up in Aunt Annie's room. Those who also have been named after
their two grandmothers will at once forgive Prudence Jane for telling
the new minister, the very first time she met him, that her name was
Imogen Rose. It was, to be sure, a stupid little fib, and was therefore
quite unworthy of Prudence Jane. For Prudence Jane almost never told
stupid little fibs. The fibs of Prudence Jane were little masterpieces,
with a finish and distinction all their own. Her brother Will, who
adored her, and had a large mind, declared when he came home from
college that she was the greatest mistress of imaginative fiction since
George Eliot. Her Aunt Annie, who had not had the advantages of a
college course, and who roomed with Prudence Jane, said that she was a
'simple little liar.'
Now this was unfair of Aunt Annie, for whatever else Prudence Jane might
be, she was _not_ simple. Even her looks belied her. With her big
confiding eyes, as round and blue as two forget-me-nots, and her pale
yellow hair held demurely back from her forehead by a blue ribbon
fillet, she gave an impression of gentle innocence that was altogether
misleading.
'She is so like little Bertie,' dear old Grandma Piper would say; 'that
same frail, flower-like look that he had toward the last. I almost
tremble sometimes. Haven't you noticed a transparency about her lately,
Annie?'
But Aunt Annie never had.
It may be said in passing that there was only one person to whom
Prudence Jane was really transparent, and that was her youngest brother,
Peter. Peter was a square, solid little person, with a vacant
countenance; but nothing important that Prudence Jane did escaped him.
'Just to look into that sweet little face is enough for me,' Grandma
Goodwin would declare; 'I don't want anybody to tell _me_ that Prudence
Jane is untruthful. No child could look straight at you out of her
little soul as she always does, and tell a fib. The trouble is they
don't understand her at home. I've always said Annie Piper had a
suspicious nature.'
To do Aunt Annie justice, it should be said that rooming with Prudence
Jane did not tend to cultivate in one a nature that was trustful and
confiding. And yet at heart Prudence Jane was really not at all the
incorrigible little fibber that she seemed. She told fibs, not because
she wished to deceive, but because the dull facts of life were so much
less interesting than the lively little romances which she could make up
out of her own head. When one is a creative genius one naturally rebels
at being shackled to anything so tedious as a fact. Prudence Jane,
looking back over a day, could rarely separate the things which had
really happened from those she had invented.
Her brother Horace, who was studying law, said that he would give a
hundred dollars to see Prudence Jane on the witness stand. This was one
night at supper when she was being cross-examined by Aunt Annie. For
five minutes she had kept the family spellbound by a circumstantial
account of how that afternoon she had seen an automobile truck, loaded
with a thousand boxes of eggs, go over the embankment. With eggs at
sixty-five cents a dozen this was really a very shocking tale.
'Prudence Jane,' said Aunt Annie, who had private sources of
information, 'you know well enough that no truck went over the
embankment. Whatever do you mean by telling such an outrageous fib?'
Prudence Jane looked across the supper table at her aunt out of two
round candid eyes.
'That wasn't a fib; that was just a story' she explained.
'Well, it wasn't true; and stories that aren't true are very wicked,'
said Aunt Annie with decision.
'Are all the stories in books true?' inquired Prudence Jane, the picture
of innocence behind her bowl of bread and milk.
'No,' Aunt Annie was forced to admit, 'but stories written in books are
different. The writers don't mean for us to believe them.'
'Do they say so in the books?' went on Prudence Jane relentlessly.
'Of course not,' said Aunt Annie; 'we know their stories aren't true, so
they don't deceive us.'
'But you always know _my_ stories aren't true, too,' objected Prudence
Jane; 'so I don't deceive you, either.'
'Prudence Jane,' said Aunt Annie, 'I shan't argue with you. You are a
very naughty little girl. I sometimes think that you don't belong to us
at all; you're so different from your brothers.'
This was true. All the other little Pipers had been simple, virtuous
children, with imaginations under perfect control--'a remarkable family'
everybody had said, until the Pipers became quite complacent about
themselves. This was why Prudence Jane seemed like such a judgment upon
them. They had waited long and patiently, as Aunt Annie put it, for
Providence to see fit to send them a dear little girl to inherit her
grandmothers' names--and they received Prudence Jane. Had she appeared
at an earlier date, or had there been another girl in the family, she
might have escaped either the Prudence or the Jane. But for fifteen
years little masculine Pipers had arrived in the household with unbroken
regularity, and been named, one by one, after all the available
grandfathers and uncles. For the last one, indeed, there had not been
even a cousin left, and he had been christened by common consent Peter
Piper. And still the grandmothers waited.
From the moment, therefore, when bluff old Doctor Jones looked in upon a
parlor full of aunts, and announced that it was 'a girl at last, by
Jove,' there had been no choice left for Prudence Jane. The only point
discussed in the solemn family conclave was as to whether she should not
be Jane Prudence.
'Oh, for mercy's sake, call the poor little kid Jurisprudence, and be
done with it,' said a flippant uncle--and that had settled it. Prudence
Jane was duly entered at the end of the list in the middle of the Family
Bible, and her career began.
Through eight years she was just unmitigated Prudence Jane,--not a
syllable of it could ever be omitted lest one grandmother or the other
be slighted,--and then suddenly one day she decided that it was a
combination no longer to be borne. She hated her name with all her
little soul; therefore she would discard it and take another. This
sounded simple, but there were, in fact, several complications. The most
important was Aunt Annie. Never a really progressive spirit, in this
matter of names Aunt Annie showed herself to be an out-and-out
stand-patter.
'You wish that you had been called Gwendolin?' she echoed in horror, as
she combed out the pale yellow hair at bed-time. 'Why, Prudence Jane,
I'm ashamed of you. Gwendolin is a very silly name indeed, and you have
two such noble ones. I only hope that you will grow up to be like the
beautiful grandmammas who gave them to you'--which was a truly lovely
little bit of optimism on Aunt Annie's part.