"I understand it as well as you do," replied Ned's sister. "And you don't always do the right thing."
"None of us do the right thing all the time," said Will, "but——"
"There isn't any but about it," cried Ethel. "If you won't accept a but in Gay's case you have no right to offer one in your own."
"Think how he bore the pain of his broken arm," said Julia. "And you said yourselves that he won the ball game for you. And you boys wouldn't have been treated so well by us if it hadn't been for Gay's splendid manners the day of the party."
The boys were somewhat affected by this argument, but not greatly.
"He put up a job on us," said Lyman, stubbornly.
"We find it hard to forgive Gay because we thought he couldn't do wrong," said slow Robert. "We thought he was immense, and when we found out that he was a little worse than most of us it was like a crack side of the head."
"Did he ever do anything that wasn't splendid except to fool you about being a girl?" Ethel asked.
"His aunts forgave him," urged Julia gently.