One night as they were undressing for bed, Mary spoke, with the same fireless depreciation, of the behaviour of a classmate which had been brought to her notice that day. This girl was said to have nefariously "copied" from another, in the course of a written examination; and, as prefect of her class Mary was bound to track the evil down. "I shall make them both show me their papers as soon as they get them back; and then, if I find proof of what's being said, I must tackle her. Just as I tackled you, Laura." Laura flushed. "Oh, M. P., I've never 'copied' in my life!" she cried. "Probably not. But those things all belong in the same box: lying, and 'copying', and stealing." "You never WILL believe me when I say I didn't know anything about that horrid Chinky. I only told a few crams--that was quite different." "I think it's most unfortunate, Laura, that you persist in clinging to that idea." Here M. P. was obliged to pause; for she had put a lock of hair between her teeth while she did something to a plait at the back. As soon as she could speak again, she went on: "You and your few crams! Have you ever thought, pray, what a state of things it would be, if we all went about telling false-hoods, and saying it didn't matter, they were merely a few little fibs?--What are you laughing at?" "I'm not laughing. I mean ... I just smiled. I was only thinking how funny it would be--Sandy, and old Gurley, and Jim Chapman, all going round making 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."