“I can hardly call such a thing a confession—I wormed it out bit by bit—I could not tell whether he was telling truth or not, till I called Norman in.”
“But he has not said anything more untrue—”
“Yes, he has though!” said Dr. May indignantly. “He said Ned Anderson put the paper there, and had been taking up the ink with it—‘twas his doing—then when I came to cross-examine him I found that though Anderson did take up the ink, it was Tom himself who knocked it down—I never heard anything like it—I never could have believed it!”
“It must all be Ned Anderson’s doing!” cried Flora. “They are enough to spoil anybody.”
“I am afraid they have done him a great deal of harm,” said Norman.
“And what have you been about all the time?” exclaimed the doctor, too keenly grieved to be just. “I should have thought that with you at the head of the school, the child might have been kept out of mischief; but there have you been going your own way, and leaving him to be ruined by the very worst set of boys!”
Norman’s colour rose with the extreme pain this unjust accusation caused him, and his voice, though low, was not without irritation, “I have tried. I have not done as much as I ought, perhaps, but—”
“No, I think not, indeed!” interrupted his father. “Sending a boy there, brought up as he had been, without the least tendency to deceit—”
Here no one could see Norman’s burning cheeks, and brow bent downwards in the effort to keep back an indignant reply, without bursting out in exculpation; and Richard looked up, while the three sisters all at once began, “Oh, no, no, papa”—and left Margaret to finish—“Poor little Tom had not always been quite sincere.”
“Indeed! and why was I left to send him to school without knowing it? The place of all others to foster deceit.”