"Where is your mother?" he asked.
"I don't know, father," Evadne answered. "I think she is in the drawing
room."
"Never say you _think_, my dear, about matters of fact," he said.
"When it is possible to _know_ it is your business to find out, and
if you cannot find out you must say you don't know. It is moral cowardice,
injurious to yourself, not to own your ignorance; and you may also be
misleading, or unintentionally deceiving, someone else."
"How might the moral cowardice of not owning my ignorance be injurious to
myself, father?" she asked.
"Why, don't you see," he answered, "you would suffer in two ways? If the
habit of inaccuracy became confirmed, your own character would deteriorate;
and by leading people to suppose that you are as wise as themselves, you
lose opportunities of obtaining useful information. They won't tell you
things they think you know already."
Evadne bent her brows upon this lesson and reflected; and doubtless it was
the origin of the verbal accuracy for which she afterward became notable.
Patient investigation had always been a pleasure, but from that time
forward it became a principle also. She understood from what her father
had said that to know the facts of life exactly is a positive duty; which,
in a limited sense, was what he had intended to teach her; but the extent
to which she carried the precept would have surprised him.
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