She was succeeding, and beginning to dream a nice dream, though she wasn't getting warm yet, when her aunt made a tempersome re-entry on the scene. Lizarann woke with a start, and, remembering all the dreadful reality, broke out crying--she couldn't help it! Shaken by one arm, and told to wake up and have done with that petering noise, she recovered self-possession, except for a lagging sob at intervals, and sat up. Directed, inconsecutively, to lie down and go to sleep again, and no more nonsense, she was preparing to comply when her aunt gave a first beginning of a screech and stopped it short. "Whatever is it?... O Lard!..." "It's a ch-chestnut sell. I eated it." Confession proved good policy in this case, averting inquiry which would have revealed the hidden store under the bolster. "O Lard, what a turn it gave me!... he's made me as bad as himself...." The woman had a frantic look about her; her husband's horrors evidently had a sort of infection for her; though of course the child had little insight into this. "You bad child, you! You little good-for-nothing slut, lyin' in bed eating chestnuts, and your father in the Hospital!" This wounded Lizarann to the quick, and righteous indignation overcame both grief and fear. "I _ain't_," she shouted, and for the moment quite forgot that she _was_, or at least _had been_, the moment before. "Don't you tell me that, you ontruthful child, and your leavings staring you in the face! Now just you tell no more stories, but say where they've took your father, and what he's done to himself." This retrospective use of a conviction for untruth--and a morally unjust one--to suggest a course of antecedent misrepresentation on her part, seemed to Lizarann quite the worst piece of mendacity within her experience. But it got the conversation still further away from that nutshell deposit; and that was good, so far. "Father _said_ he'd be took proper care on, and I w-wasn't to c-cry, and I shan't!" "_Can't_ you tell me where they've took your father _to_, instead of vexin' me? Is he gone to the Station, or the Hospital?" "The Spoleece, they carried him off to the Sospital. Yass!" Then, sitting up in bed, a small monument of woe, for the moment tearless, Lizarann considered whether she had grounds for deciding which Hospital. She knew of three, the Smallporks, Guys's, and Bartholomew's, but she was very uncertain about the two last. She decided on denying the Smallporks, if asked. However, her aunt accepted _the_ Hospital as sufficient. Let it go at that! "What did your daddy say he'd done to his leg? Now, no makin' up! Say the truth, like he told you." This would have been a signal to many children to strain hard to invent the truth out of their own heads. Goaded by stupid, unsympathetic people, they do this in self-defence. But Lizarann was honourable and clear-headed. "He only saided his leg--didn't say nuffint about it. Only the sip's doctor would make a square job of it. Yass!"