He glanced up, hastily shifted his eyes, and then blurted out desperately.
"If you'd ever been an absolute rotter and then got on to the fact when it was too late, I guess you wouldn't be very much like yourself, either. I'm a confounded cad, Willa, and worse!" He dropped his head on his hands with a groan. "I ought to be shot!"
"Well, that's a healthy sign," Willa observed cheerfully. "Lots of people are rotters and never find it out. It's like a disease; when you know what is the matter, you can usually find a cure."
"Sometimes it's incurable." His voice was muffled. "I'm in a hole and there's no way out."
"Then climb up again." Willa paused and added deliberately: "Don't try to burrow a passage-way through slime, Vernon. You'll only get in deeper and deeper."
That brought his head up with a suspicious start.
"I say, what do you know about it?"
"Suppose you tell me?"
"You, Willa? You're the last person in the world—!" He broke off hastily.
"Why? If you are in a scrape perhaps I could help you out of it."