She was not exactly struggling with temptation; she had inherited too much from her mother's Puritan ancestry to make the question of a struggle possible when the duty of truth stared her, as now, in the face.

She simply did not speak at once because the thing appeared to her stupendous, and nobody, least of all a child, but has a threshold of preparation before stupendous things.
"They haven't half put the paper on," said her father.

"Didn't half paste it, I suppose.

You can't trust anybody unless you are right at their heels.

Confound 'em! There, I've got to go round and blow 'em up to-morrow, before I go to the city." Then Maria spoke.