But with Charlotte's taunt still ringing in his ears, Ted was ruthless: "Fiddlesticks! If she feels bad about that, she's silly. And I can't tell secrets to silly girls."
Sheila was sorry for Charlotte, but she began to feel vaguely flattered on her own account: "What's the secret?"
"I know a place—just a little way back yonder—that's fat with nuts!"
Sheila looked disappointed. It seemed, at this hour, rather a poor secret. But Ted, still with the air of honoring her above all others of her sex, went on: "I'm going back and get some. And"—this impressively—"I'm going to let you come with me!"
Sheila brightened at the magnanimous offer, but a moment later grew uneasy: "Grandmother would be scared if I didn't come home with the others."
"How'd she find it out? Your house is farthest. She won't see the rest of 'em."
"But—but when I tell her—" said Sheila uneasily.
"You needn't tell her! Don't you understand? She'll never know you didn't come home with the others!"
Ted had a scrupulous personal honor, a pride, as it were, in his integrity. He told the truth about his own transgressions and paid the piper without complaint. But for others his truth was sometimes equivocal, his morality comfortably lax. And these lapses from grace on his part always filled Sheila with a shocked dismay.
"Oh," she protested, "I couldn't do that! Why, it would be lying!"