aid Ellen, whom I
am very fond of; I have given her my watch, my knife and all my pocket
money, so that I have now no pocket money at all and shall probably ask
you for some more sooner than I otherwise might have done, and you will
also have to buy me a new watch and a knife." But then fancy the
consternation which such an announcement would have occasioned! Fancy
the scowl and flashing eyes of the infuriated Theobald! "You
unprincipled young scoundrel," he would exclaim, "do you mean to vilify
your own parents by implying that they have dealt harshly by one whose
profligacy has disgraced their house?"

Or he might take it with one of those sallies of sarcastic calm, of which
he believed himself to be a master.

"Very well, Ernest, very well: I shall say nothing; you can please
yourself; you are not yet twenty-one, but pray act as if you were your
own master; your poor aunt doubtless gave you the watch that you might
fling it away upon the first improper character you came across; I think
I can now understand, however, why she did not leave you her money; and,
after all, your godfather may just as well have it as the kind of people
on whom you would lavish it if it were yours."

Then his mother would burst into tears and implore him to repent and seek
the things belonging to his peace while there was yet time, by falling on
his knees to Theobald and assuring him of his unfailing love for him as
the kindest and tenderest father in the universe. Ernest could do all
this just as well as they could, and now, as he lay on the grass,
speeches, some one or other of which was as certain to come as the sun to
set, kept running in his head till they confuted the idea of telling the
truth by reducing it to an absurdity. Truth might be heroic, but it was
not within the range of practical domestic politics.

Having settled then that he was to tell a lie, what lie should he tell?
Should he say he had been robbed? He had enough imagination to know that
he had not enough imagination to carry him out here. Young as he was,
his instinct told him that the best liar is he who makes the smallest
amount of lying go the longest way--who husbands it too carefully to
waste it where it can be dispensed with. The simplest course would be to
say that he had lost the watch, and was late for dinner because he had
been looking for it. He had been out for a long walk--he chose the line
across the fields that he had actually taken--and the