ing up things that had never happened."

"You've a queer notion of what's funny. Have you utterly no respect for
the truth?"

"Yes, of course I have. But I say"--Laura, who always slipped quickly
out of her clothes, was sitting in her nightgown on the edge of the
bed, hugging her knees. "I say, M. P., if everybody told stories, and
everybody knew everybody else was telling them, then truth wouldn't be
any good any more at all, would it? If nobody used it?"

"What rubbish you do talk!" said Mary serenely, as she shook her
toothbrush on to a towel and rubbed it dry.

"As if truth were a soap!" remarked Cupid who was already in bed,
reading NANA, and trying to smoke a cigarette under the blankets.

"You can't do away with truth, child."

"But why not? Who says so? It isn't a law."

"Don't try to be so sharp, Laura."

"I don't mean to, M. P.--But what IS truth, anyhow?" asked Laura.

"The Bible is truth. Can you do away with the Bible, pray?"

"Of course not. But M. P.... The Bible isn't quite all truth, you know.
My father----" here she broke off in some confusion, remembering Uncle
Tom.

"Well, what about him? You don't want to say, I hope, that he didn't
believe in the Bible?"

Laura drove back the: "Of course not!" that was all but over her lips.
"Well, not exactly," she said, and grew very red. "But you KNOW, M. P.,
whales don't have big enough throats ever to have swallowed Jonah."

"Little girls shouldn't talk about what they don't understand. The
Bible is God's Word; and God is Truth."

"You're a silly infant," threw in Cupid, coughing as she spoke. "Truth
has got to be--and honesty, too. If it didn't exist, there couldn't be
any state, or laws, or any social life. It's one of the things that
makes men different from animals, and the people who boss us know
pretty well what they're about, you bet when they punish the ruffians
who don't practise it."

"Yes, now THAT I see," agreed Laura eagerly. "Then truth's a useful
thing.--Oh, and that's probably what it means, too, when you say:
Honesty is the best Policy."

"I never heard such a child," said M. P., shocked. "Cupid, you really
shouldn't put such things into her head.--You're down-right immoral,
Laura."

"Oh, how CAN you say such a horrid thing?"

"Well, your ideas are simply dreadful. You ought to try your hardest to
improve them."

"I do, M. P., really I do."

"You don't succeed. I think there must be a screw loose in you
somewhere."