“Oh, Davy, how could you?” she said, with a quiver in her voice.  “Don’t you know how wrong it was?”

Davy was aghast.  Anne crying . . . he had made Anne cry!  A flood of real remorse rolled like a wave over his warm little heart and engulfed it.  He rushed to Anne, hurled himself into her lap, flung his arms around her neck, and burst into tears.

“I didn’t know it was wrong to tell whoppers,” he sobbed.  “How did you expect me to know it was wrong?  All Mr. Sprott’s children told them regular every day, and cross their hearts too.  I s’pose Paul Irving never tells whoppers and here I’ve been trying awful hard to be as good as him, but now I s’pose you’ll never love me again.  But I think you might have told me it was wrong.  I’m awful sorry I’ve made you cry, Anne, and I’ll never tell a whopper again.”

Davy buried his face in Anne’s shoulder and cried stormily.  Anne, in a sudden glad flash of understanding, held him tight and looked over his curly thatch at Marilla.

“He didn’t know it was wrong to tell falsehoods, Marilla.  I think we must forgive him for that part of it this time if he will promise never to say what isn’t true again.”

“I never will, now that I know it’s bad,” asseverated Davy between sobs.  “If you ever catch me telling a whopper again you can . . .”  Davy groped mentally for a suitable penance . . . “you can skin me alive, Anne.”

“Don’t say ‘whopper,’ Davy . . . say ‘falsehood,’” said the schoolma’am.

“Why?” queried Davy, settling comfortably down and looking up with a tearstained, investigating face.  “Why ain’t whopper as good as falsehood?  I want to know.  It’s just as big a word.”

“It’s slang; and it’s wrong for little boys to use slang.”

“There’s an awful lot of things it’s wrong to do,” said Davy with a sigh.  “I never s’posed there was so many.  I’m sorry it’s wrong to tell whop . . . falsehoods, ’cause it’s awful handy, but since it is I’m never going to tell any more.  What are you going to do to me for telling them this time?  I want to know.”  Anne looked beseechingly at Marilla.

“I don’t want to be too hard on the child,” said Marilla.  “I daresay nobody ever did tell him it was wrong to tell lies, and those Sprott children were no fit companions for him.  Poor Mary was too sick to train him properly and I presume you couldn’t expect a six-year-old child to know things like that by instinct.  I suppose we’ll just have to assume he doesn’t know anything right and begin at the beginning.  But he’ll have to be punished for shutting Dora up, and I can’t think of any way except to send him to bed without his supper and we’ve done that so often.  Can’t you suggest something else, Anne?  I should think you ought to be able to, with that imagination you’re always talking of.”

“But punishments are so horrid and I like to imagine only pleasant things,” said Anne, cuddling Davy.  “There are so many unpleasant things in the world already that there is no use in imagining any more.”