“They always do outgrow it, in the end?”
Mrs. Lambert laughed a little, gently. “Oh, I think so, don’t you? The moral sense develops, later on ... and, besides, to put it on the lowest ground, they soon find that fibbing isn’t worth while. They always get found out, bless their hearts, most of them do it so badly!”
“Cecil’s stories are often very silly ones—things that no one could be taken in by, seriously.”
“That’s just it!” the schoolmaster’s wife declared briskly. “It shows they aren’t really deceitful, doesn’t it? And I do honestly think the school atmosphere is a thoroughly healthy one, you know. They spend a tremendous amount of time in the open air and they get keen about the games, and they really haven’t much time for naughtiness!”
In a vague way, that she did not seek to analyze, it comforted Rose to hear the reiteration of that trivial adjective, “naughty.”
In Mrs. Lambert’s smiling mouth, it seemed to denude Cecil’s characteristic of some sinister significance that Rose was not able to specify.
“I’ve been worried to death about him,” she again admitted. “Have you truly known boys like that before?”
“My dear Mrs. Aviolet—but of course! I think, between ourselves, that an exaggerated view is taken of that sort of thing. I don’t mean for a minute that truth isn’t the most important thing in the world—of course it is—but quite a lot of children really don’t seem to understand the value of truth while they’re quite little. It all comes later, and I do think boys are so good for one another in that way—the code of honour being so strict, you know, and so much esprit de corps amongst themselves. We had a boy here once—quite a little fellow—with exactly your Cecil’s failing. As a matter of fact, he was half Portuguese, and we don’t take any foreigners at all now—this was before my husband had the school—so perhaps you couldn’t expect quite the same training.... But he was much worse than your little boy can possibly be, I’m sure. He was deceitful, poor little chap—what one could only describe as an artful child.”
“Cecil isn’t that,” Rose interjected. “Go on.”
“Well, he came very near to being expelled in disgrace. Two or three of the boys had been up to some mischief or other—something rather worse than usual—but they’d all have got off lightly if it hadn’t been that this little chap told lie upon lie, trying to cover up his own traces, you know, and incriminating others right and left. We only got at the truth after endless difficulty, when he’d betrayed himself by half a dozen contradictions. (After all, he was only eleven years old.) Well, to cut a long story short, he’d have been sent away if it hadn’t been for my husband. Will was his form-master, and he begged the Head to give him another chance, and said he’d be personally responsible for the boy’s future good behaviour. You understand, it was the lies he’d told that made one so anxious—not the mischief, which was nothing very bad in itself. His parents were in Brazil, and he was in charge of an uncle who was very strict, and altogether one felt dreadfully sorry for the boy. So he was allowed to stay on.”