Arthur's inheritance

by Emma Leslie

He had been questioned about this very closely by Mr. Brading once, but he could only reply that if the letter had been received from the post office, he should have delivered it to Mr. Langley in the usual way. He certainly had not noticed the letter, although it did bear a coronet, but this was not to be wondered at, considering the number of letters he had to sort every morning. He would just glance at the department it was addressed to, and having ascertained this, he would place it in the bag and deliver it with a number of others. Of course there were occasional slips, and a letter got put into a wrong bag by mistake, in which case the manager receiving it set the matter straight by sending it at once to the department where it should have been delivered.

In spite of this rule, a strict enquiry had been made in every part of the house, in the hope of tracing the missing letter; but nothing had come of it. And there the matter remained, to Arthur's great annoyance and anxiety, for although no word of accusation had been spoken against him, he could feel that Mr. Brading, at least, suspected him of having some share in its disappearance.

As time went on, and no clue to the mystery presented itself, he felt sure that Mr. Brading thought he had actually stolen the letter, though why he should do this he was at a loss to know.

At first he felt very bitter about it, and was half-disposed to resign his situation, but on thinking over the matter closely and calmly, he saw that this would never do. Hard as it was to stay, he must not leave so long as Mr. Brading would let him remain.

If the letter was never found, he might live down the suspicion felt against him just now, and by his life prove to all that he could not be guilty of this theft. He had come to this resolution that very afternoon, and at the same time had determined that he would keep the whole matter to himself, since no good could be done by troubling his sisters with it.

So when the talk was over, that occupied so much of Annie's thoughts just now, he went up to his own room, for his head ached, and he wanted to have a little quiet time to himself, and try to think out a reasonable excuse for Mr. Brading taking up such a prejudice against him.

It was hard for the lad to think such a thing possible, but as Mr. Brading was known to be most fair and just in all his dealings, there must be some basis on which he could rest his suspicion, apart from the mere loss of the letter. And after going back to the old school-days, when he had first heard of the family characteristic of living on credit, he came to the conclusion that Mr. Brading was not so much to blame after all.

School-boys are invariably frank in their criticism of each other, and he remembered once that a lad had told him his father was no better than a thief, if he could not pay for the things he bought, and never tried to work that he might have the means of doing so.

There had been a tremendous fight on the way home from school, and the boy had gone home with a black eye. But it is doubtful whether he suffered half so much from Arthur's fists as Arthur himself did from the words that had been spoken, for he knew even then that there was some truth in the accusation, and that his fist had not cleared his father's name from the aspersion.

Now, might it not be the same thought lingering in Mr. Binding's mind, and that if there was not this inheritance of debt clinging to him, he would never have thought twice before deciding that he, Arthur, was innocent of this theft, wherever the letter might have gone. If only he could get rid of it; if only he could earn the right to say, "No man was ever wronged of a penny through my father!"