“But why have you not gone back yourself? He was a friend, was he not?”
“Yes, he was what people would call a friend. I 'm like the hare in the fable, I have many friends; but if I must be confidential, I 'll tell you why I did not go. I had a notion, just as likely to be wrong as right, that the Chief would take offence at his Registrar being a sporting character, and that if I were to absent myself just now, he'd find out the reason, whereas by staying here I could keep all quiet, and when Beattie came back I could square him.”
“You could what?”
“A thousand pardons for my bit of slang; but the fact is, just as one talks French when he wants to say nothings, one takes to slang when one requires to be shifty. I meant to say, I could manage to make the doctor hold his tongue.”
“Not if grandpapa were to question him.”
Sewell smiled, and shook his head in dissent.
“No, no. You're quite mistaken in Dr. Beattie; and what's more, you 're quite mistaken in grandpapa too, if you imagine that he 'll think the better of you for forgetting the claims of friendship.”
“There was none.”
“Well, of humanity, then! It was in your cause this man suffered, and it is in your house he lies ill. I think you ought to be there also.”
“Do you think so?”