Page:Crawford - Love in idleness.djvu/119

 Mr. Brinsley has never been in the English navy. I don't say that I think so. I say that I know it. Will you believe me, or him?"

"Oh, Fanny!" Miss Cordelia raised her eyes with a frightened glance.

"Not that it matters," added Fanny, looking away across the moonlit lawn again. "Who cares? Only, it's one of those lies that go against a man," she continued after a short pause. "A man may pretend that he has shot ten million grisly bears in his back yard, or hooked a salmon that weighed a hundred-weight—people will laugh and say that he s a story-teller. It's all right, you know—and nobody minds. But when a man says he's been in the army or in the navy, and hasn't—people call him a liar and cut him. I don't know why it's so, I'm sure, but it is—and we all know it."

"Yes," answered Cordelia, almost tremulously; "but you haven't proved that Mr. Brinsley isn't telling the truth—"

"Oh yes, I have! There never was a deep-sea sailor yet who had never heard of club-hauling a ship to save her. I know about those