“Tell me,” Hugh urged, “you’ll feel the better for it. Is it anything because of Griffith?”
“Yes, it’s that,” Frank cried, raising his head defiantly. “They have taken away my cornetcy, Hugh. ’Tis all along of Michael Turner. And I never harmed him; I had done my best. But he comes to my father; he says he must have a man for his troop. So my father turns his anger on me; he said I was a selfish, heedless child, where ’twas time I bore me as a young man. And then Ned Griffith comes back all cured, and they stripped me of my cornetcy to give it to him.” Frank dropped down with his face buried in the pillow. “I pray you, go away,” he choked; and, in the next breath, “Nay, come back, Hugh; you’ve always been my friend.”
Hugh sat down obediently by the bed, scarcely knowing what to say, when Frank with his face still hidden suddenly broke out, “Hugh, did you look to have that cornetcy last winter?”
Hugh hesitated: “Yes, I did hope. But I had no reason, ’twas no fault of yours.”
“My faith, I had not taken it of you, had I known. I’d not have used a man as Ned has used me, as they all have used me. I have been playing the fool, and they all have been scoffing at me, and I did not know it.”
“Sure, you must not take it so grievously, Frank,” Hugh urged. “Get up and wash your face and show you care not. You’ll have another commission soon, when they see you are in earnest.”
Between coaxing and encouraging he got Frank to his feet at last, and even persuaded him to eat supper, which he ventured to order sent to the chamber. Throughout Hugh did his best to talk to the boy of any and all matters that had befallen him, till he roused him to a certain dull interest. “So you’ve had back your horse all safe?” Frank asked listlessly. “’Twas I procured Captain Gwyeth the name of the place where you were hiding. He bought the horse when ’twas sold at Oxford, and he wished you to have it, that time when he was working for your pardon. Yes, I know your father well; he is always kind to me, and does not mock me as the others have been doing. I used to tell him all about you, and then he asked me find where you were lodging. I had influence with my father then, so I could learn it,” he added bitterly.
All thought of comforting Frank had left Hugh; he tried to listen with sympathy to his piteous complaints, but it was useless; so he rose, and, bidding him as cheery a good night as possible, and promising to come back in the morning, went out from the chamber. At the end of the gallery was a deep window-seat, where he sat down and stared out at the roofs of the town that huddled gray in the twilight, so intent on his own thoughts that he started when Dick touched his shoulder. “How did you leave the poor popinjay?” Strangwayes asked, with a trace of a laugh in his voice.
“Better, I think,” Hugh replied.
“Poor lad! Sir William might remember there is a mean betwixt over-indulgence and severity. But Frank has brought it on himself. When he forgot to do his duty in the troop he would be trying to cajole Captain Turner into good humor, just as he has always cajoled Sir William. And Michael Turner is not the man to coax that way. He has influence with Sir William, too, and so—Well, ’twill be for Frank’s good in the end,” Dick concluded philosophically, as he settled himself on the window-bench.