“No,” muttered Davy.

“You look pale.  You’d better keep out of the sun this afternoon,” admonished Mrs. Lynde.

“Do you know how many lies you told Mrs. Lynde?” asked Dora reproachfully, as soon as they were alone after dinner.

Davy, goaded to desperation, turned fiercely.

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” he said.  “You just shut up, Dora Keith.”

Then poor Davy betook himself to a secluded retreat behind the woodpile to think over the way of transgressors.

Green Gables was wrapped in darkness and silence when Anne reached home.  She lost no time going to bed, for she was very tired and sleepy.  There had been several Avonlea jollifications the preceding week, involving rather late hours.  Anne’s head was hardly on her pillow before she was half asleep; but just then her door was softly opened and a pleading voice said, “Anne.”

Anne sat up drowsily.

“Davy, is that you?  What is the matter?”

A white-clad figure flung itself across the floor and on to the bed.

“Anne,” sobbed Davy, getting his arms about her neck.  “I’m awful glad you’re home.  I couldn’t go to sleep till I’d told somebody.”

“Told somebody what?”

“How mis’rubul I am.”

“Why are you miserable, dear?”

“’Cause I was so bad today, Anne.  Oh, I was awful bad—­badder’n I’ve ever been yet.”

“What did you do?”

“Oh, I’m afraid to tell you.  You’ll never like me again, Anne.  I couldn’t say my prayers tonight.  I couldn’t tell God what I’d done.  I was ’shamed to have Him know.”

“But He knew anyway, Davy.”

“That’s what Dora said.  But I thought p’raps He mightn’t have noticed just at the time.  Anyway, I’d rather tell you first.”

“What is it you did?”

Out it all came in a rush.

“I run away from Sunday School—­and went fishing with the Cottons—­and I told ever so many whoppers to Mrs. Lynde—­oh! ’most half a dozen—­and—­and—­I—­I said a swear word, Anne—­a pretty near swear word, anyhow—­and I called God names.”

There was silence.  Davy didn’t know what to make of it.  Was Anne so shocked that she never would speak to him again?

“Anne, what are you going to do to me?” he whispered.

“Nothing, dear.  You’ve been punished already, I think.”

“No, I haven’t.  Nothing’s been done to me.”

“You’ve been very unhappy ever since you did wrong, haven’t you?”

“You bet!” said Davy emphatically.

“That was your conscience punishing you, Davy.”

“What’s my conscience?  I want to know.”

“It’s something in you, Davy, that always tells you when you are doing wrong and makes you unhappy if you persist in doing it.  Haven’t you noticed that?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know what it was.  I wish I didn’t have it.  I’d have lots more fun.  Where is my conscience, Anne?  I want to know.  Is it in my stomach?”