“As you like, Whalley; Kenrick has no business to suspect me in that shameful way, and to abuse me, and treat me as if I was quite beneath his notice, and cast old faults in my teeth,” answered Walter, with deep vexation. “Let him find out the truth for himself. He can, if he takes the trouble.”
Both the friends were thoroughly angry with each other; each of them imagined himself deeply wronged by the other, and each of them, in his irritation, used strong and unguarded expressions which lost nothing by repetition. Thus the “rift of difference” was cleft deeper and deeper between them; and, chiefly through Kenrick’s pride and precipitancy, a disagreement which might at first have been easily adjusted became a serious, and threatened to become a permanent, quarrel.
“Power, did you repeat what I told you about Kenrick to any one?” asked Walter, next time he met him.
“Repeat it?” said Power; “why, Walter, do you suppose I would? What do you take me for?”
“All right, Power; I know that you couldn’t do such a thing; but Kenrick declares I’ve spread it all over the school, and has just been abusing me like a pickpocket.” Walter told him the circumstances of the case, and Power, displeased for Walter’s sake, and sorry that two real friends should be separated by what he could not but regard as a venial error on Walter’s part, advised him to write a note to Kenrick and explain the true facts of the case again.
“But what’s the use, Power?” said Walter; “he would not listen to my explanation, and said as many hard things of me as he could.”
“Yes, in a passion. He’ll be sorry for them directly he’s calm; for you know what a generous fellow he is. You can forgive them, I’m sure, Walter, and win the pleasure of being the first to make an advance.”
Walter, after a little struggle with his resentment, wrote a note, and gave it to Whalley to give to Kenrick next time he saw him. It ran as follows:—
“My dear Kenrick,—I think you are a little hard upon me. Who can have told Jones anything about you and your home secrets I don’t know. He could not have learnt them through me. It’s true I did mention something about your father to Power when I was talking in the most affectionate way about you. I’m very sorry for this, but I never dreamt it would make you so angry. Power is the last person to repeat such a thing. Pray forgive me, and believe me always to be—
“Your affectionate friend, Walter Evson.”
Kenrick’s first impulse on receiving this note was to seek Walter on the earliest occasion, and “make it up” with him in the sincerest and heartiest way he could. But suddenly the sight of Jones and Mackworth vividly reminded his proud and sensitive nature of the scene that had caused him such acute pain. He did not see how Jones could have learnt about the vehicle, at any rate, without Walter having laughed over it to some one. Instead of seeking further explanation, or thinking no evil and hoping all things, he again gave reins to his anger and suspicion, and wrote:—