‘You bet I won’t,’ said Rupert. ‘I say, don’t! It makes it ever so much worse. Now I’ve got to go back to your uncle and get the kick-out. And I jolly well deserve it.’
‘Just wait a minute,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’m going to get something I want to give you before you go. Wait here, won’t you?’
‘Don’t be long then,’ said Rupert in calm wretchedness.
Charlotte dried her eyes and went out, went to her own room and got her favourite Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers. She wrote Rupert’s name in it and then marched straight to her uncle’s room, opened the door, and went in.
Uncle Charles, for once, was not reading or writing. He was sitting by his table drumming on it with his fingers and looking both sad and angry.
‘Uncle!’ said Charlotte.
‘Where is Rupert?’ said the Uncle, frowning.
‘He doesn’t know I’m here,’ said Charlotte, answering her uncle’s thoughts rather than his words. ‘I asked him to wait while I got something to give him. Uncle, you aren’t going to send him away, are you?’
‘I feel it only due to Mr. Macpherson to send Rupert back,’ said the Uncle, ‘to show that we regret the aspersions’—the Uncle spoke as to a grown-up equal—‘the aspersions cast on him by my abetting Rupert in his flight and removing him from Mr. Macpherson’s care. If it is a punishment to Rupert, it is not an undeserved one.’