Read these lines: "Tom was about to take refuge in a lie, when he saw two long tails of yellow hair hanging down a back that he recognized by the electric sympathy of love; and by that form was the only vacant place on the girls side of the school-house. He instantly said: I stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn!" The master then ordered him to go and sit with the girls. What can be inferred about the confession?

1. He was going to lie, so his first instinct was to avoid punishment altogether. 2. What changes his mind is what he sees, a girl he recognises and one empty seat beside her. 3. Only after seeing that seat does he confess, and he confesses to the worst offence available. 4. The order to sit with the girls puts him in the very seat he had just noticed. 5. So the confession is a way of being sentenced to what he wants, option B. 6. Option A is ruled out by the words about taking refuge in a lie, which show he knew he was in the wrong. 7. Option D fails because the offence he names is the one that brings the heaviest punishment in that room. _Source: Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), public domain_