"There,—go! and don't let me see or hear of you; that is, till I tell you! Go along, I say! Hum-hum!" (in a tone half of wrath, and half of triumph), "his father's child! If you will ruin yourself, I can't help it."
"Nor I, sir," said Tom, in a really piteous tone, bemoaning the day he ever saw Aberalva, as he watched Mark stride into his own gate. "If I had but had common luck! If I had but brought my £1500 safe home here, and never seen Grace, and married this girl out of hand! Common luck is all I ask, and I never get it!"
And Tom went home sulkier than a bear: but he did not let his father find out his trouble. It was his last evening with the old man. To-morrow he must go to London, and then—to scramble and twist about the world again till he died! "Well, why not? A man must die somehow: but it's hard on the poor old father," said Tom.
As Tom was packing his scanty carpet-bag next morning, there was a knock at the door. He looked out, and saw Armsworth's clerk. What could that mean? Had the old man determined to avenge the slight, and to do so on his father, by claiming some old debt? There might be many between him and the doctor. And Tom's heart beat fast, as Jane put a letter into his hand.
"No answer, sir, the clerk says."
Tom opened it, and turned over the contents more than once ere he could believe his own eyes.
It was neither more nor less than a cheque on Mark's London banker for just five hundred pounds.
A half-sheet was wrapped round it, on which were written these words:—
"To Thomas Thurnall, Esq., for behaving like a gentleman. The cheque
will be duly honoured at Messrs. Smith, Brown, and Jones, Lombard
Street. No acknowledgment is to be sent. Don't tell your father. MARK
ARMSWORTH."
"Queer old world it is!" said Tom, when the first burst of childish delight was over. "And jolly old flirt, Dame Fortune, after all! If I had written this in a book now, who'd have believed it?"