"Go, eh?" said Paradine, without showing much surprise at the failure of so very forlorn a hope, "oh, very well, just as you please, of course. Let your poor wife's only brother go from your doors without a penny in the world!—but I warn you that a trifle or so laid out in stopping my mouth would not be thrown away. Some editors would be glad enough of a sensation from real life just now, and I could tell some very odd tales about this little affair!"
"Tell them, if a character for sanity is of no further use to you," said Paul. "Tell them to anyone you can get to believe you—tell the crossing-sweeper and the policemen, tell your grandmother, tell the horse-marines—it will amuse them. Only, you shall tell them on the other side of my front door. Shall I call anyone to show you out?"
Paradine saw his game was really played out, and swaggered insolently to the door: "Not on my account, I beg," he said. "Good-bye, Paul, my boy, no more dissolving views. Good-bye, my young friend Richard, it was good fun while it lasted, eh? like the Servian crown—always a pleasant reminiscence! Good evening to you, Doctor. By the way, for educational purposes let me recommend a 'Penang lawyer'—buy one as you go back for the boys—just to show them you haven't forgotten them!"
And, having little luggage to impede him, the front door closed upon him shortly afterwards—this time for ever.
When he had gone, Dick looked imploringly at his father and then at the Doctor, who, until Paradine's parting words had lashed him into fury again, had been examining the engravings on the walls with a studied delicacy during the recent painful scene, and was now leaning against the chimney-piece with his arms folded and a sepulchral gloom on his brow.
"Richard," said Mr. Bultitude, in answer to the look, "you have not done much to deserve consideration at my hands."
"Or at mine!" added the Doctor ominously.
"No," said Dick, "I know I haven't. I've been a brute. I deserve a jolly good licking."
"You do," said his father, but in spite of his indignation, the broken-down look of the boy, and the memory of his own sensations when waiting to be caned that morning, moved him to pity. And then Dick had shown some compunction in the billiard-room: he was not entirely lost to feeling.