But, rather than shock her by acknowledging the offence I lied out of it.

It is the only course left for the well-bred in such circumstances." An hour later I saw her punish her child for denying that she had committed some piece of mischief of which she was guilty.

The mother's excuse to herself probably was that the child told a lie, she, a "society fib." Perhaps the smaller sinner had no reputation for breeding to maintain.
The love for drink is not more surely transmitted from father to son than is the habit of lying.

Once begun in a family, it rears itself, like a hooded snake, all along the line in generation after generation and appears to be an ineradicable evil.

It spreads, too, as specks in a garnered fruit.