Part 35 (1/2)

”There is one thing, Robin,” said Harry a little later, laughing--”what about the letters?”

”Oh, I know!” Robin looked up at his father appealingly. ”I don't know what you must think of me over that business. But I suppose I believed for a time in it all, and then when I saw that it wouldn't do I just wanted to get out of it as quickly as I could. I never seem to have thought about it at all--and now I'm more ashamed than I can say.

But I think I'll go through with it; I don't see that there's anything else very much for me to do, any other way of making up--I think I'd rather face it.”

”Would you?” said Harry. ”What about your friends and the House?”

Robin flinched for a moment; then he said resolutely, ”Yes, it would be better for them too. You see they know already--the House, I mean.

All the chaps in the dining-hall and the picture-gallery, they've known about it all day, and I know that they'd rather I didn't back out of it. Besides--” he hesitated a moment. ”There's another thing--I have the kind of feeling that I can't have hurt Dahlia so very much if she's the kind of girl to carry that sort of thing through; if, I mean, she takes it like that she isn't the sort of girl that would mind very much what I had done----”

”Is she,” said Harry, ”that sort of girl?”

”No, I don't think she is. That's what's puzzled me about it all. She was worth twenty of me really. But any decent sort of girl would have given them back----”

”She has----”

”What?”

”Given them back.”

”The letters?”

Harry went to his writing-table and produced the bundle. They lay in his hand with the blue ribbon and the neat handwriting, ”For Robert Trojan,” outside.

Robin stared. ”Not _the_ letters?”

”Yes--the letters; I have had them some days.”

But still he did not move. ”_You've_ had them?--several days?”

”Yes. I went to see Miss Feverel on my own account and she gave me them----”

”You had them when we asked you to help us!”

”Yes--of course. It was a little secret of my own and Miss Feverel's--our--if you like--revenge.”

”And we've been laughing at you, scorning you; and we tried--all of us--and could do nothing! I say, you're the cleverest man in England!

Score! Why I should think you have!” and then he added, ”But I'm ashamed--terribly. You have known all these days and said nothing--and I! I wonder what you've thought of me----”

He took the letters into his hand and undid the ribbon slowly. ”I'm jolly glad you've known--it's as if you'd been looking after the family all this time, while we were plunging around in the dark. What a score! That we should have failed and you so absolutely succeeded--”

Then again, ”But I'm jolly ashamed--I'll tell you everything--always.

We'll work together----”

He looked them through and then flung them into the fire.

”I've grown up,” he suddenly cried; ”come of age at last--at last I know.”

”Not too fast,” said Harry, smiling; ”it's only a stage. There's plenty to learn--and we'll learn it together.” Then, after a pause, ”There's another thing, though, that will astonish you a bit--I'm engaged----”

”Engaged!” Robin stared. Quickly before his eyes pa.s.sed visions of terrible Colonial women--some entanglement that his father had contracted abroad and had been afraid to announce before. Well, whatever it might be, he would stand by him! It was they two against the world whatever happened!--and Robin felt already the antic.i.p.atory glow of self-sacrificing heroism.