‘No,’ said his aunt; ‘if it had been downstairs the maids must have noticed it, and Ronald has just been searching his own pockets and yours, and it is not there.—So, I am afraid, Basil, you must either have dropped it on your way home, or else you have put it in some other boy’s coat. I will write and ask if any of them have found it, although I think if they have, they will be honourable enough to bring it back.’
‘Honourable enough!’ The words fell on Vivian’s ears like burning drops of lead, reminding him of some words which his father had once spoken when Ronald and he had been discussing what they meant to be when they were men.
‘Well, boys,’ Dr Armitage had said, putting his hands on their shoulders, ‘I may not have much money to leave you, but I will give you a good education, and after that you shall choose a calling for yourselves. I do not much mind what you are, as long as you grow up God-fearing, honourable men.’
Ronald, always slow to speak, had merely answered, ‘Yes, father, we’ll try to be that;’ but Vivian had hugged the Doctor in his impulsive way, and had promised readily what seemed to him an easy task.
Alas! what claim had he to the word ‘honourable’ now?
The thought stung him to the quick, and yet he had not the courage to slip downstairs to the study, after Basil had gone, and his aunt had resumed her writing, and finish the confession which Anne’s entrance had interrupted.
In spite of his self-loathing, it was a relief to him to think that the risk of discovery was averted in the meantime, for every one seemed satisfied that the pistol had not been lost in the house; so he tried recklessly to stifle his conscience, and presently, when they went out to play hide-and-seek in the garden, his voice was so loud and merry that Aunt Dora, watching them from the study window, wondered at the buoyancy of childhood, and thought with a smile of the miserable white-faced little lad of an hour ago.