you. She was playing behind the smoke tree with the other children, Mrs. Marcey."
Sara whose heart was at ease, ran to her mother, clasp ing her about the knee, with her little cry of:
"Mother, I love you." And at this moment the idea concerning Sara which had long been at the back of Alice's mind came out definitely into the sunlight. So much in the sunlight that it communicated itself to Tom, when Rob explained with scorn:
"Sara don't know anything! She asked me, 'Which way now ought I to say the truth—I was in the house, or I wasn't—I forget.'"
She, poor dear, was ready to say either. For a second Sara's father and mother had a glimpse into Sara's mind, and there is nothing harder to see into than the mind of a little girl just five years old. Some of the things they saw were:
"When my father and my mother laugh at me I have been good. When they frown at me I have been bad.
"The truth is saying, 'I have been in the house.' They are so glad you do it."
There were other sound pieces of logic like this, but both Alice and Tom Marcey now knew that the truth, for Sara was "Mother, I love you."
Facts had not begun to exist for her. Tom and Alice would have to wait a while until they did. In the meantime Sara was a slave. She was a slave to her flooding affections. The only thing of importance was to avoid giving her dear mother and father pain—and herself the pain of their displeasure. If she forgot and did things she had been told not to do of course she lied. For slaves always lie. It is only free men like Robert the Fearless who tell the disagreeable truth.
