"There's plenty wish they hadn't heard the last of him," rejoined Scrafton brutally.
"Well, you haven't, any way; and when you hear of him again, you ruffian," continued Harry, under his breath, "it will be to some purpose. I know something—I mean to know all. And it surprises you! What do you suppose I stayed here for except to watch you? And I'll have you watched still, Scrafton. Trust me not to lose sight of you till I am at the bottom of your villainy."
Not a word of this was heard by Mrs. Bickersteth or by the boys; they merely saw Scrafton's face set in a grin that had suddenly become ghastly, and the snuff spilling from the box between his blue-nailed fingers, as Harry Ringrose turned upon his heel and strode from the room.
He took the stairs three at a time, in his eagerness to throw his things into his portmanteau and to go straight from the guilty man downstairs to the guilty man in Leadenhall Street or on Richmond Hill; he would find him wherever he was; he would tear the truth from that false friend's tongue. And this new and consuming excitement so lifted him outside of his present surroundings, that it was as though the school was not, as though the last two months had not been; and it was only when he rose perspiring from his strapped portmanteau that the glint of medicine bottles caught his eye, bringing the still lingering odours of the sick-room back to his nostrils, and to his heart a tumult of forgotten considerations.
Instead of hurrying downstairs he strode up and down his room until a note was brought to him from Mrs. Bickersteth. It begged him as a gentleman to go quietly and at once, and it enclosed a cheque for ten pounds, or his full salary for the unfinished term. Harry felt touched and troubled. The lady wrote a good bold hand, but her cheque was so tremulously signed that he wondered whether they would cash it at the bank. He had qualms, too, about accepting the full amount; but the thought of his mother overcame them, and that of the boys fortified him to send down a stamped receipt with a line in which he declined to go before Mrs. Bickersteth's sons returned from the City.
He remained upstairs all day, however, in order to cause no additional embarrassment before the boys, and, when his ears told him that afternoon school had begun, he was still further touched at the arrival of his dinner on a tray. On the strength of this he begged for an interview with Mrs. Bickersteth, and, when Baby Bickersteth came up to say her mother was quite unequal to seeing him, Harry apologised freely and from his heart for the violence to which he had given way in his indignation. But he said that he must see her brothers before he went, as nothing could alter his opinion of the ferocious Scrafton, or of the monstrosity of retaining such a man in such a position.
"And you," he cried, looking boldly into the doll-like eyes, "you agree with me! Then back me up this evening, and you will never, never, never regret it!"
The girl coloured as she left him without a word; but he thought the blue eyes were going to fill, and he hoped for the best in the evening. Alas! he was leaning on reeds, and putting his faith in a couple of sober, unimaginative citizens, who, seeing Harry excited, deducted some seventy per cent. from his indictment, and met his every charge with the same stolid answer.
"We were under him ourselves," they said, "and you see, we are none the worse."
"But you were Mrs. Bickersteth's sons. And I don't say these boys will be any the worse when they grow up. I only say it is a crime to let such little chaps be so foully used."