“If I run out to the garden, won’t that be the best way? Then Vendla’ll come in, and she’ll think the cat broke it. I’ll shut the cat in here all alone,” thought this little soldier, who was fighting a battle between right and wrong. “It will not be same as a lie,—I think not.”
Jimmy moved towards the back door, and there he stood quite still.
Why did Lucy stare at him so, as if she were watching to see him make up his mind?
“Lucy Lyman Dunlee, what makes you look so awful sober? Just as if papa was dead, and mamma had been hooked by a cow? Why don’t you go out-doors and see—see where Polly White is?”
Lucy was gone in a twinkling, glad to get away from Jimmy, who was scowling now “as fierce as ten furies.”
He looked at the door, then at the cat. “Wish I was little like Lucy; then it wouldn’t be wrong. No matter what you do when you’re little like Lucy.”
Jimmy sighed.
“Babies like her! They don’t have to be gentlemen. But when you’re a boy, and getting so big—
“Did George Washington ever shut up a cat? George Washington wouldn’t do it. ‘I can’t tell a lie,’ says George Washington. No, sir!”
This seemed to settle the question for Jimmy. The ‘No, sir!’ sounded as loud as a cannon-ball, though even the cat did not hear. The words were spoken only in Jimmy’s heart.