Sheldon nodded.

“Then,” she pressed home the point, “isn’t disguising that pride under a mask of careless indifference equivalent to telling a lie?”

“Yes, it is,” he admitted.  “But we tell similar lies every day.  It is a matter of training, and the English are better trained, that is all.  Your countrymen will be trained as well in time.  As Mr. Tudor said, the Yankees are young.”

“Thank goodness we haven’t begun to tell such lies yet!” was Joan’s ejaculation.

“Oh, but you have,” Sheldon said quickly.  “You were telling me a lie of that order only the other day.  You remember when you were going up the lantern-halyards hand over hand?  Your face was the personification of duplicity.”

“It was no such thing.”

“Pardon me a moment,” he went on.  “Your face was as calm and peaceful as though you were reclining in a steamer-chair.  To look at your face one would have inferred that carrying the weight of your body up a rope hand over hand was a very commonplace accomplishment—­as easy as rolling off a log.  And you needn’t tell me, Miss Lackland, that you didn’t make faces the first time you tried to climb a rope.  But, like any circus athlete, you trained yourself out of the face-making period.  You trained your face to hide your feelings, to hide the exhausting effort your muscles were making.  It was, to quote Mr. Tudor, a subtler exhibition of physical prowess.  And that is all our English reserve is—­a mere matter of training.  Certainly we are proud inside of the things we do and have done, proud as Lucifer—­yes, and prouder.  But we have grown up, and no longer talk about such things.”

“I surrender,” Joan cried.  “You are not so stupid after all.”

“Yes, you have us there,” Tudor admitted.  “But you wouldn’t have had us if you hadn’t broken your training rules.”

“How do you mean?”

“By talking about it.”

Joan clapped her hands in approval.  Tudor lighted a fresh cigarette, while Sheldon sat on, imperturbably silent.

“He got you there,” Joan challenged.  “Why don’t you crush him?”

“Really, I can’t think of anything to say,” Sheldon said.  “I know my position is sound, and that is satisfactory enough.”

“You might retort,” she suggested, “that when an adult is with kindergarten children he must descend to kindergarten idioms in order to make himself intelligible.  That was why you broke training rules.  It was the only way to make us children understand.”

“You’ve deserted in the heat of the battle, Miss Lackland, and gone over to the enemy,” Tudor said plaintively.

But she was not listening.  Instead, she was looking intently across the compound and out to sea.  They followed her gaze, and saw a green light and the loom of a vessel’s sails.

“I wonder if it’s the Martha come back,” Tudor hazarded.

“No, the sidelight is too low,” Joan answered.  “Besides, they’ve got the sweeps out.  Don’t you hear them?  They wouldn’t be sweeping a big vessel like the Martha.”