“I wish, as you go home, you’d call upon young Bradley, and tell him to come here as soon as he possibly can.”
“I will do so with pleasure. Say you wish to see him?”
“Yes; upon particular business.”
“All right; it shall be done, Alf, dear. Done with the greatest pleasure.”
The woman took her departure, and in an hour or two after this Mr. Bradley, the young man in question, made his appearance.
He was a genteel, good-looking fellow, of about eight-and-twenty, and was one of Alf Purvis’s most particular friends—if friendship can with propriety be applied to such a connection—for, like Purvis, he was a loose fish, a lawless character. He, however, affected to be very partial to Mr. Algernon Sutherland, and was just the sort of man he needed to perform the office which he was about to assign to him.
The greeting between the two was a cordial one, for Mr. Bradley had not seen his young friend since he rusticated at Broxbridge.
Alf at once proceeded to put his friend in possession of all those circumstances which have been described in the preceding chapter.
He, however, passed lightly over the thrashing and his ignominious expulsion from the farmer’s house.
“A nasty, spiteful, objectionable, old agriculturist,” cried Mr. Bradley, after the narrative had been brought to a conclusion. “He rode rusty—did he?”