‘He is a nice fellow,’ said Jane. ‘I am glad you have seen him, for neither Mr. White nor Rotherwood can believe that he is not utterly foolish, if not worse.’
‘A boy may do foolish things without being a fool,’ said Sir Jasper. ‘Not that this one is such another as his father. I wish he were.’
‘I suppose he has more of the student scholarly nature.’
‘Yes. The enlistment, which was the making of his father, was a sort of moral suicide in him. I got him to tell me all about it, and I find that the idea of the inquest, and of having to mention you, you monkey, drove him frantic, and the dismissal completed the business.’
‘I told them about it,’ said Fergus.
‘Quite right, my boy; the pity was that he did not trust to your honour, but he seems to have worked himself into the state of mind when young men run amuck. I saw his colonel, Lydiard, and the captain and sergeant of his company, who had from the first seen that he was a man of a higher class under a cloud, and had expected further inquiry, though, even from the little that had been seen of him, there was a readiness to take his word. As the sergeant said, he was not the common sort of runaway clerk, and it was a thousand pities that he must go to the civil power—in which I am disposed to agree. What sort of man is the cousin at the marble works?’
‘A regular beast,’ murmured Fergus.
‘I think,’ said Jane, ‘that he means to be good and upright.’
‘More than means,’ said Ada, ‘but he is cautious, and says he has been so often deceived.’
‘As far as I can understand,’ said Jane, ‘there was originally desperate enmity between him and his cousin.’