"But," insisted Bonnie, "all the same there are certainly plenty of
cases where if he had to choose between them any man would obey his
conscience rather than the law."

"Of course, there are such cases," admitted Mr. Tutt. "But we ought to
discourage the idea as much as possible."

"Discourage a sense of honor?" exclaimed Miss Wiggin. "Why, Mr. Tutt!"

"It depends on what you mean by honor," he retorted. "I don't take much
stock in the kind of honor that makes an heir apparent 'perjure himself
like a gentleman' about a card game at a country house."

"Neither do I," she returned, "any more than I do in the kind of honor
that compels a man to pay a gambling debt before he pays his tailor, but
I do believe that there may be situations where, though it would not be
permissible to perjure oneself, honor would require one to refuse to
obey the law."

"That's a pretty dangerous doctrine," reflected Mr. Tutt. "For everybody
would be free to make himself the judge of when he ought to respect the
law and when he oughtn't. We can easily imagine that the law would come
out at the small end of the horn."

"In matters of conscience--which, I take it, is the same thing as one's
sense of honor--one has got to be one's own judge," declared Miss Wiggin
firmly.

"The simplest way," announced Tutt, "is to take the position that the
law should always be obeyed and that the most honorable man is he who