Part 26 (1/2)

”To be sure--I knew it was Hal!”

”Sam! you did?--why didn't you tell?” cried Annie.

”I wasn't--to say--sure,” said Sam; ”and I couldn't go and get him into a sc.r.a.pe. I thought he might tell himself, if he could ever make up the money again!”

”Yes,” said Susan; ”he would have done that. He always fancied he should get a sovereign from Colonel Carey.”

”He talked till he thought so,” said Sam.

”But what made you guess he had done so, Sam?” said Miss Fosbrook.

”I did suspect him myself, but I never felt justified in accusing him of such a thing.”

”I don't know! I saw he had been getting into a fix with those Grevilles, and had been sold somehow. They said something, and got out of my way directly, and I was sure they had done some mischief, and left him to pay the cost.”

”Did you ask him?” said Susan.

”What was the use? One never knows where to have him. He will eat up his words as fast as he says them, with his AT LEAST, till he doesn't know what he means. Nor I didn't want to know much of it.”

”Still I can't think how you could let poor Bessie live under such a cloud,” said Christabel.

”You didn't believe it,” said Sam, ”nor anyone worth a snap of my finger. Besides, if I had known, and had to tell, what a horrid shame it would have been if the naval cadets.h.i.+p had been to be had for him! I knew Bessie would have thought so too, and then he would have been out of the way of the Grevilles, and would have got some money to make it up.”

”Then is there no chance of the cadets.h.i.+p now?”

”Oh, we should have heard of it long ago if there had been! So I mind the coming out the less; but it's perfectly abominable to have had all this row, and for Papa to be so cut up in this little short time at home.”

”I never saw him more grieved,” said Mr. Merrifield. ”He was hardly more overcome when your mother was at the worst.”

They started, for they had forgotten Uncle John, or they would never have spoken so freely; but he now put down his newspaper, and looked as if he meant to talk.

Susan ventured to say, ”And indeed they had all been so very good before. The pig made them so.”

”A learned pig, I should think,” said her uncle, laughing good- naturedly.

”We were obliged to take care,” said Susan, ”or we got so many fines.”

Christabel, finding that Mr. Merrifield looked at her, helped out Susan by explaining that various small delinquencies were visited with fines, and that the desire to save for the pig had rendered the children very careful.

”Indeed,” she said, ”I was thankful for the incentive, but I am afraid that it was over-worked, and did harm in the end:” and she glanced towards David.

”It is the way with secondary motives,” was the answer.

Here Captain Merrifield came back alone; and his brother was the only person who ventured to say, ”Well?”

”I have sent him to his room,” said the Captain. ”It is a very bad business, though of course he made excuses to himself.”

The Captain then told them Henry's confession. He had been too much hurried by the fear of being caught, to take out his own share of the h.o.a.rd, and had therefore emptied the whole cupful into his pocket- handkerchief, tied it up, and run off with it, intending to separate what was honestly his own. What that was he did not know, but his boastful habits and want of accuracy had made his memory so careless, that he fancied that a far larger proportion was his than really was, and his purposes were in the strange medley that falls to the lot of all self-deceivers, sometimes fancying he would only take what he had a right to (whatever that might be), sometimes that he would borrow what he wanted, and replace it when the sovereign should be given to him, or that the Grevilles would make it up when they had their month's allowance.