"Harm? You are very young, Sibyl, and don't understand these things. Your brother has chosen very foolishly to join the rebel forces, and so has made himself one of our acknowledged enemies; and I never heard of declared enemies in time of war walking in and out of each other's houses like tame cats," answered Mr. Merridew, sarcastically.
"But Eph, such a boy as Eph, only nineteen, only two years older than I! What harm could he do now, more than he has ever done, by coming to his uncle's house as a visitor?" still persisted Sibyl, rather foolishly.
"What harm!" exclaimed Mr. Merridew, impatiently. "What a child you are, Sibyl! Why, his coming here would compromise me fatally with the royal government. I should be suspected of disloyalty, and do you think that he, your brother, could be in any such communication with us and fail to see and hear many things that might bring us disaster if reported to his officers?"
"You think Eph would be so mean as to tell tales?" exclaimed Sibyl, in high indignation.
"Tell tales!" repeated Mr. Merridew, flinging back his head with irrepressible laughter at Sibyl's ignorance. Why, my dear, the reporting of important facts, however gained in times of war, is part of war tactics; it is not called 'telling tales.'"
"And would you—would you, if you were in Ephraim's camp as a visitor,—would you—"
"Tell tales?" laughed Mr. Merridew. "Indeed I would, if I heard anything worth telling,—anything that I thought would save the cause I believed to be a righteous cause." Then, more seriously: "Why, Sibyl, it would be my duty to do it."
"Oh! oh!" cried Sibyl, "it is odious, odious, all this war business."
"Yes, I grant you that; but who is to blame for bringing this odious business upon us? Who but these foolish malcontents, these rebels, like—"
"Like my father and my brother," broke in Sibyl, hotly, as Mr. Merridew hesitated.