“No, she did not,” Mrs. Challoner admitted. “Nor did she ask me for the advance. I offered it.” “That’s it,” said the cousin. “The craving was on her, and the moment she saw a way to satisfy it, she began to tell lies. She’s as true as daylight at any other time, and as honest.” “I’m so sorry I gave her that money,” sighed Lucy, forgetting for the moment that if such a revelation was to come, then the sooner it came the better. “Oh, it wasn’t having the money that did it!” answered the other reassuringly. “As she told a lie the fit had come, and if she hadn’t got drunk one way, why, she would another! Once she actually pawned my little girl’s boots. And she so fond of the child! ’Tisn’t her fault, poor dear! We mustn’t judge her. It’s just like a disease.” “But how could you think of allowing her to use you as a reference, and yet of not warning me of her terrible weakness?” said Mrs. Challoner. The woman’s eyes wandered a little. “Well, we didn’t want her to mention us!” she answered. “I’ll engage she didn’t till after you’d seen the Edinburgh letters. Jessie came home so full of you and the little gentleman that I thought, ‘Here’s a place where she’ll be happy and will keep right if ever she will.’ And when the lady came to inquire, my husband he kep’ out of the way. He said he wasn’t going to mix hisself in it; but I said to him, ‘It’s our Christian duty to do the best we can for our own. Ain’t we told we’ve got to bear each other’s burdens?’ says I.” Lucy drew her breath hard. How was one to meet this perverted sentiment, this putting of “charity,” as it were, upside down? “But don’t you see you were wrong to further her coming into my house without telling me the truth about her?” she urged. “She might have burned my house, she might have killed my boy! Could you not see that you were not dealing justly by me?” “I don’t know about ‘justly,’” said the woman tartly, with a sneer on the last word. “It’s our Christian duty to have charity and cover a multitude of sins. If I’d told about Jessie’s weakness, nobody would have taken her; and, as she’s spent her bit of money already, there’s nothing and nobody between her and the workhouse but just ourselves, and my husband doesn’t like to have his flesh and blood made a pauper. Yet it’s rather hard he should have to take from me and his own children to keep her.” Lucy’s heart fainted within her at this strange mixture of warped exegesis, perverted family pride, and private self-interest. Yet she made another attempt to get the matter set in a right light.