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 weather being very hot, he had taken off his coat and waistcoat; in carrying them over his arm his watch, his money, and his knife had dropped out of them.  He had got nearly home when he found out his loss, and had run back as fast as he could, looking along the line he had followed, till at last he had given it up; seeing the carriage coming back from the station, he had let it pick him up and bring him home.

This covered everything, the running and all; for his face still showed that he must have been running hard; the only question was whether he had been seen about the Rectory by any but the servants for a couple of hours or so before Ellen had gone, and this he was happy to believe was not the case; for he had been out except during his few minutes’ interview with the cook.  His father had been out in the parish; his mother had certainly not come across him, and his brother and sister had also been out with the governess.  He knew he could depend upon the cook and the other servants—­the coachman would see to this; on the whole, therefore, both he and the coachman thought the story as proposed by Ernest would about meet the requirements of the case.

CHAPTER XL

When Ernest got home and sneaked in through the back door, he heard his father’s voice in its angriest tones, inquiring whether Master Ernest had already returned.  He felt as Jack must have felt in the story of Jack and the Bean Stalk, when from the oven in which he was hidden he heard the ogre ask his wife what young children she had got for his supper.  With much courage, and, as the event proved, with not less courage than discretion, he took the bull by