# Growing Up (Vorse)/Chapter 14

THAT day at luncheon Sara opened a corner of her secret mind. It was one of those small happenings that pass unobserved at the time and whose significance is seen later. She was swinging her feet to and fro under the table. Playing with the dog, was what Sara was doing. The part of her visible above the table, sat up company, fashion and ate its food as well as could be expected, while her out-of-sight legs indecorously gamboled back and forth.
"Are you playing with the dog with your feet, under the table, Sara?" cried Alice.
"No," answered Sara. "Why, yes; I am, too."
"That's a good little girl to say you are," responded Alice encouragingly.
There was a moment's pause, and then Sara opened the door of her mind a crack by inquiring:
"Why was I a good little girl?"
One would think that she had worked crescendo through the whole cycle of lies. So far, however, Sara had been an artist. She seemed to lie for the sake of lying. From this Tom sometimes derived a sad satisfaction. He was inclined in these days to be pessimistic about his daughter. But he tried his hardest to overcome her tendency, for it hurts a man's self-esteem to have said, "Let there be light," and not have even a ray of dawn. So, several times lately Tom had taken Sara on his knees and had had conversations that went:
"You must always tell the truth, Sara dear." Sara nodded sagely. "I would rather have you do anything ​than lie. Lying is worse than anything else. Do you understand? I would rather have you do anything than lie about it."
"What things?" Sara inquired with interest.
"Well, I'd rather have you selfish and hateful to the baby and well—have you act like a bad little girl, rather than have you lie."
"Would you rather I was dirty and say, 'No I won't!' 'Yes, I will,' 'I won't do it,' and screech awful loud?"
"Indeed, yes. Those things are very naughty, but lying is worse. Whenever you start to say what isn't true, say to yourself, 'No. I won't lie.' Say it over after Father."
"I'll say, 'No. I won't lie. I won't! I won't!'" Sara emphasized this laudable sentiment by clapping one hand on the other and shaking her head.
"Don't ever be afraid to tell the truth."
"I am not afraid. I'm not a 'fraid cat. Jamie's a 'fraid cat, but I'm big." She seemed to have grown two inches.
"But you don't always tell the truth."
"Don't I?" she asked.
"Think. Do you?"
She regarded her father speculatively.
"Not every time," she said at last.
At the end of such an interview Tom would comfort himself by thinking that light was going to dawn. He had been working harder than ever over Sara ever since his mother—his own mother—had said:
"It seems to me you're making an awful to-do about Sara's fanciful ways. Lots of little children had just as soon lie as tell the truth, and later on outgrow it."
No young parent can fail to shudder at the laxity of such a sentiment, for when does one begin to inculcate the element of character if not in the very first years of ​life? So Sara's laudable resolve was a balm to him.
She might have gone on improving had not the Williamses moved in next door, bringing with them a swing, a very big tea set, and a superior assortment of Teddy bears, and their daughters, one as old as Robert and another very little older than Sara. Sara would hang over the fence, saying, "I got a Teddy bear, too."
"Where we lived before we had rabbits, but we gave them to my auntie. You can't move rabbits when all the furniture has to go too."
"Why can't you?" asked Sara.
"Because your mama won't let you," the little girl, whose name was Tillie, replied with rather crushing finality.
Sara recovered with the statement, "Our Uncle Zotsby's got steam engine insides."
The next step in friendship was "Come over to my yard." "No, come over to mine," and then after polite conversation between mothers, a group of little girls playing in one yard or the other. Sara, however, under solemn promise of not going in the house next door without permission. It was now that Sara succumbed to that beguiler of childhood, "The House Next Door." Oh, lovely House Next Door! Oh, desirable house, spot toward which our footsteps turned. House so much more interesting than one's own house. House Next door, where grown-ups treat you with the consideration you deserve; house where the other children have to be polite to you; where it is to others that the words: "Be nice to your little friend; be a sweet, unselfish girl," are spoken.
All of us have bent our way toward that spot, and one of the very worst things about the city is that there can be, in the nature of things, no House Next Door.