“Surely,” said Rose, “the poor child’s story faithfully repeated to these men will be sufficient to exonerate him.”
“I doubt it, my dear young lady,” said the doctor, shaking his head. “I don’t think it would exonerate him either with them or with legal functionaries of a higher grade. What is he, after all, they would say?—a runaway. Judged by mere world considerations and probabilities, his story is a very doubtful one.”
“You credit it, surely?” interrupted Rose, in haste.
“I believe it, strange as it is, and perhaps may be an old fool for doing so,” rejoined the doctor; “but I don’t think it is exactly the tale for a practised police-officer, nevertheless.”
“Why not?” demanded Rose.
“Because, my pretty cross-examiner,” replied the doctor, “because, viewed with their eyes, there are so many ugly points about it; he can only prove the parts that look bad, and none of those that look well. Confound the fellows, they will have the why and the wherefore, and take nothing for granted. On his own shewing, you see he has been the companion of thieves for some time past; he has been carried to a police-office on a charge of picking a gentleman’s pocket, and is taken away forcibly from that gentleman’s house to a place which he cannot describe or point out, and of the situation of which he has not the remotest idea. He is brought down to Chertsey by men who seem to have taken a violent fancy to him, whether he will or no, and put through a window to rob a house, and then, just at the very moment when he is going to alarm the inmates, and so do the very thing that would set him all to rights, there rushes into the way that blundering dog of a half-bred butler, and shoots him, as if on purpose to prevent his doing any good for himself. Don’t you see all this?”
“I see it, of course,” replied Rose, smiling at the doctor’s impetuosity; “but still I do not see anything in it to criminate the poor child.”
“No,” replied the doctor; “of course not! Bless the bright eyes of your sex! They never see, whether for good or bad, more than one side of any question, and that is, invariably, the one which first presents itself to them.”
Having given vent to this result of experience, the doctor put his hands into his pockets, and walked up and down the room with even greater rapidity than before.
“The more I think of it,” said the doctor, “the more I see that it will occasion endless trouble and difficulty to put these men into possession of the boy’s real story. I am certain it will not be believed; and even if they can do nothing to him in the end, still the dragging it forward, and giving publicity to all the doubts that will be cast upon it, must interfere materially with your benevolent plan of rescuing him from misery.”