"Zora," she said evenly, "why didn't you come to class when I called?"
"I didn't hear you," said Zora, looking at her full-eyed and telling the half-truth easily.
Miss Taylor was sure Zora was lying, and she knew that she had lied to her on other occasions. Indeed, she had found lying customary in this community, and she had a New England horror of it. She looked at Zora disapprovingly, while Zora looked at her quite impersonally, but steadily. Then Miss Taylor braced herself, mentally, and took the war into Africa.
"Do you ever tell lies, Zora?"
"Yes."
"Don't you know that is a wicked, bad habit?"
"Why?"
"Because God hates them."
"How does you know He does?" Zora's tone was still impersonal.
"He hates all evil."
"But why is lies evil?"
"Because they make us deceive each other."
"Is that wrong?"
"Yes."
Zora bent forward and looked squarely into Miss Taylor's blue eyes. Miss Taylor looked into the velvet blackness of hers and wondered what they veiled.
"Is it wrong," asked Zora, "to make believe you likes people when you don't, when you'se afeared of them and thinks they may rub off and dirty you?"
"Why--why--yes, if you--if you, deceive."
"Then you lies sometimes, don't you?"
Miss Taylor stared helplessly at the solemn eyes that seemed to look so deeply into her.
"Perhaps--I do, Zora; I'm sure I don't mean to, and--I hope God will forgive me."
Zora softened.
"Oh, I reckon He will if He's a good God, because He'd know that lies like that are heaps better than blabbing the truth right out. Only," she added severely, "you mustn't keep saying it's wicked to lie 'cause it ain't. Sometimes I lies," she reflected pensively, "and sometimes I don't--it depends."
Miss Taylor forgot her collar, and fingered the pin on the desk. She felt at once a desperate desire to know this girl better and to establish her own authority. Yet how should she do it? She kept toying with the pin, and Zora watched her. Then Miss Taylor said, absently: "Zora, what do you propose to do when you grow up?"
Zora considered.
"Think and walk--and rest," she concluded.
"I mean, what work?"
"Work? Oh, I sha'n't work. I don't like work--do you?"
Miss Taylor winced, wondering if the girl were lying again. She said quickly: "Why, yes--that is, I like some kinds of work."
"What kinds?"
But Miss Taylor refused to have the matter made personal, as Zora had a disconcerting way of pointing all their discussions.
"Everybody likes some kinds of work," she insisted.
"If you likes it, it ain't work," declared Zora; but Mary Taylor proceeded around her circumscribed circle: "You might make a good cook, or a maid."