"I think you'll have to. There isn't any other way."
"But it was all true."
"Perhaps so. I am not sure. I know you meant to stand up for the right side; still, you must apologize to Mr. Mitchell, all the same."
The boy stared at her reproachfully.
"But I thought you would understand, Ted."
"I do, dear. If I didn't understand quite so well, I shouldn't be so sure what you ought to do. When I was your age, I was always getting into just such scrapes as this, simply because I used to burn up all my powder without taking aim. All the good it did, was to show up the weak spots of my position. Go slow, Allyn, and don't be so ready to fight. It never does any good."
"But I wasn't going to sit still and let him bully that little baby,"
Allyn argued.
"No; but you needn't have tried to bully him in your turn," his sister answered promptly, though in her heart of hearts she was in perfect sympathy with her young brother. She gloried in his fearlessness, even while she told herself that he must submit to discipline. "It wasn't your place to tell Mr. Mitchell what he ought to do. He is an older man, and he may have reasons that you don't know. He is not accountable to you, Allyn, and his judgment may be better than yours. Moreover, you owe him obedience, and the McAlisters always pay their debts."
"Have I got to eat humble pie and go back, Teddy?"
"You've got to eat humble pie," she said, as a laughing note crept into her voice when she thought of Jamie Lyman, insignificant and warty cause of such a storm. "About your going back, that is for papa to say, dear. I think you ought to do it."