'Various things—brandy-and-water chiefly. I don't like it, and had some ale; but I was playing with Harry's puppies, and not much noticing Clem.'
'Do you think it was a trick?'
'I can't tell. He is so innocent, he would have no notion how stiff to make it. If any one meant mischief, it was Jackman; and I did think once or twice he had found out Tina, and was playing him off. On the way home, when I was trying to hinder poor Clem from falling off, he went on chaffing so, that I longed to jump off, and lay the whip about his ears.'
'Poor Clem!' said Felix, more grieved and shocked than angry, and not insensible to Fulbert's being even more appalled, and quite frightened out of his sulkiness.
'It is a bad business,' he sighed. 'It was all Lance's fault for letting himself be lugged into that baby party.'
Even this was a great admission, and Felix would not blight it by a word.
'It is well the girls are not at home,' was all he said.
'I only told Cherry that Clem wasn't well. I can't face her; I shall go to bed. I would not have had this happen for the world.'
'I shall say nothing to her,' said Felix, dejectedly, turning to leave the room, under a horrible sense of disgrace and stain on the whole family; but at the door he was caught hold of by Fulbert, who looked up at him with a face quite unlike anything he had ever seen in the lad.
'Felix, I never was so sorry in my life. I wish you would give me a good rowing.'