"If!" exclaimed Miss Cordelia, in ready resentment. "He's the most truthful man alive."
"Oh! And he told you he had been in the English navy."
"What has that to do with it? Of course he has, if he says so."
"He's unwise to say so, because he hasn't," answered Fanny, in her usual direct way.
"How in the world can you say that a man like Mr. Brinsley—an honourable man, I'm sure—is telling a deliberate falsehood? I'm surprised at you, Fanny—indeed I am! It isn't like you."
"Did you ever know me to tell you anything that wasn't exactly true?" asked the young girl, looking down into her elderly cousin's sweet, sad face, for she was much the taller.
"No—of course not—but—"
"Well, Cousin Cordelia, I tell you that your Mr. Brinsley has never been in the English navy. I don't say that I think so. I say that I know it. Will you believe me, or him?'
"Oh, Fanny!" Miss Cordelia raised her eyes with a frightened glance.
"Not that it matters," added Fanny, looking away across the moonlit lawn again. "Who cares? Only, it's one of those lies that go against a man," she continued after a short pause. "A man may pretend that he has shot ten million grisly bears in his back yard, or hooked a salmon that weighed a hundred-weight—people will laugh and say that he's a story-teller. It's all right, you know—and nobody minds. But when a man says he's been in the army or the navy, and hasn't—people call him a liar and cut him. I don't know why it's so, I'm sure, but it is—and we all know it."