“What?”
“I can’t tell you,” he repeated.
“You mean you really did it?” Miss Kindheart inquired, in frantic anxiety.
“I can’t tell you anything about it,” Pee-wee said; “so that’s all I’m going to say.”
Silence is confession. Sympathea Softe held up her arms in horrified despair. Katherine Kindheart stared at Pee-wee with surprised and stony eyes. Dorothy Docile shuddered, looking at him as if he were a curiosity. And still he was silent. He could not speak. A scout’s honor is to be trusted.
“I can keep a secret if girls can’t!” he suddenly shouted in mingled defense and recrimination.
“A secret,” moaned Cousin Prudence. “Oh, he did it in secret. Thank goodness, poor, dear Mother isn’t here.”
As for Grove and Artie, they had not expected this. They had promised themselves the delight of witnessing Pee-wee’s confusion and then of listening to his thundering explanation. That would have been entertainment for everybody. But there stood Pee-wee, seeming by his silence to confess his guilt; there he stood refusing to explain.
On the whole, it was a blessing that Aunt Sophia was not there.