She stopped, quite as much astounded at her own outburst as James. The boy no longer cried, for astonishment had driven away his tears, but stared thoughtfully out of the window. He had not caught the full meaning of all that his aunt had said, but he knew that he was receiving a most important confidence from the most unexpected possible quarter, which was exactly in tune with his own mood. The good lady herself was for a few moments literally too bewildered to utter a word.
"Good Heavens!" ran her astonished thoughts, "do you know what you have done, Selina Wimbourne? You have made more of a fool of yourself in the last five minutes than you have done in all the years since you were a girl! God grant it may do him no harm."
To James she said aloud, as soon as she could control her voice:
"I am a foolish and indiscreet old woman, James—"
"No, you're not," interrupts the boy with sudden spirit.
"Well, I've said a great deal more than I ought, at any rate. I don't want you to get any false impression from what I have told you. I want to explain to you that all the suffering I have undergone from—in the way I have told you—has not hurt me, but has rather benefited me. You see, there are two kinds of human suffering. One is forced upon you from the outside. You can't prevent that kind, you just have to go through with it. It never is as bad as you think it is going to be, I find. The other kind you make for yourself, by doing the wrong thing when you know you ought to be doing the right thing. That is the really bad kind of suffering, and you can always prevent it by doing the thing you know is right."
"You mean," said James thoughtfully, "that it would have been even worse for you if you had squealed, when you knew—when you knew you ought not to!"
"Exactly. It's simply a question of the lesser of two evils. Doing the pleasant but wrong thing hurts more in the end than doing the disagreeable but right thing."
"I see. But suppose you can't tell which is the right thing and which the wrong one?"
"Ah, there you've put your finger on a real difficulty. You just have to think it all over and decide as best you can, and then, if it turns out wrong, you're not so much to blame. Then, your suffering is of the kind that you can't help. No one can do any better than what he thinks is right at the time.... Now get up, dear, I hear people coming."