"I have," replied Marjory. "I want to know whether it is ever right to tell a lie, or a kind of a one, for the sake of somebody else." And she blushed very red.
Miss Waspe looked at her in surprise. Marjory had always seemed to her to be so absolutely straightforward and honest that she could not understand the reason for such a question.
"I don't believe in a 'kind of a lie,'" she replied, "A thing is either true or untrue, and I don't think it could ever be right to tell an untruth under any circumstances."
"Not if you can see quite well that if you tell this lie it will prevent something bad happening to some one else?" asked Marjory appealingly.
"No," was the decided reply. "Tell the truth at all costs, and trust the results to a higher power than yours. Wrong cannot make right."
Tears stood in Marjory's eyes, but she said no more, and Miss Waspe did not question her. The truth was that ever since Marjory had told the man in the plantation that "people" of the name of Shaw kept the Low Farm, allowing him to think that the husband was at home, she had felt uncomfortable about it. Certainly she had said it for Mrs. Shaw's sake, to prevent a suspicious-looking person from going to the farm when its mistress was alone; but she had not been able to silence her conscience, and had at last determined to ask Miss Waspe what she thought. Her words had only confirmed Marjory's uneasy feelings, and she could not give the circumstances as an excuse without breaking her promise to the man.
"I've got a problem too," said Blanche, "and it's this: Is a secret a proper secret if you tell only one person, and you are certain that other person will never tell?"
The others laughed, and Miss Waspe said,--
"I don't quite know what you mean, dear."
Blanche explained. "Well, it's like this. I simply can't keep a secret. I feel as if I shall burst if I don't tell somebody, so I always tell mother, and then it's all right, and, of course, I never want to tell anybody else. Do you think it is right for me to do that?"
Miss Waspe could not help smiling at this confession, and she replied, "I think if you tell the person who wants to confide in you that you must tell your mother, and the person still chooses to trust you with the secret, then you are quite right to tell her."