lips.

Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hester said, in frozen amazement:

"You told a LIE?"

Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hannah followed with the muttered and amazed
ejaculation:

"You confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!"

It was all they could say. The situation was new, unheard of,
incredible; they could not understand it, they did not know how to take
hold of it, it approximately paralyzed speech.

At length it was decided that the erring child must be taken to her
mother, who was ill, and who ought to know what had happened. Helen
begged, besought, implored that she might be spared this further
disgrace, and that her mother might be spared the grief and pain of
it; but this could not be: duty required this sacrifice, duty takes
precedence of all things, nothing can absolve one from a duty, with a
duty no compromise is possible.

Helen still begged, and said the sin was her own, her mother had had no
hand in it--why must she be made to suffer for it?

But the aunts were obdurate in their righteousness, and said the law
that visited the sins of the parent upon the child was by all right
and reason reversible; and therefore it was but just that the innocent
mother of a sinning child should suffer her rightful share of the grief
and pain and shame which were the allotted wages of the sin.

The three moved toward the sick-room.

At this time the doctor was approaching the house. He was still a good
distance away, however. He was a good doctor and a good man, and he had
a good heart, but one had to know him a year to get over hating him, two
years to learn to endure him, three to learn to like him, and four and
five to learn to love him. It was a slow and trying education, but it
paid. He was of great stature; he had a leonine head, a leonine face, a
rough voice, and an eye which was sometimes a pirate's and sometimes
a woman's, according to the mood. He knew nothing about etiquette, and
cared nothing about it; in speech, manner, carriage, and conduct he was
the reverse of conventional. He was frank, to the limit; he had opinions
on all subjects; they were always on tap and ready for delivery, and he
cared not a farthing whether his listener liked them or didn't. Whom
he loved he loved, and manifested it; whom he didn't love he hated, and
published it from the housetops. In his young days he had been a sailor,
and the salt-airs of all the seas blew from him yet. He was a sturdy and
loyal Christian,