“Nonsense, Ra; don’t mind a little chaff. What’s happened? Nothing serious, I hope?”
But Wilton was angry and miserable just then, and struggled to get free. He did not venture to tell Kenrick what had really been passing through his mind. “Let me go,” he said, struggling to get free.
“O, go, by all means,” said Kenrick, with his pride all on fire in a moment; “don’t suppose that I want you or care for you;” and he turned his back on Wilton, to whom he had never once spoken harshly before.
The current of Wilton’s thoughts was turned; he really loved Kenrick, who was the only person for whom he had any regard at all. Besides, Kenrick’s support and favour were everything to him just then, and he stopped irresolutely at the door, unwilling to leave him in anger.
“What do you want? Why don’t you go?” asked Kenrick, with his back still turned.
Wilton came back to the window, and humbly took Kenrick’s hand, looking up at him as though to ask forgiveness.
“How odd you are to-day, Raven,” said Kenrick, relenting. “What were you crying about when I came in?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Ken. I was thinking how much better some fellows are than I am, and whether it was too late to begin afresh, and whether the door was open to me still, when you came in, and said, ‘Too late,’ and banged the door, which I took for an answer to my thoughts.”
They were the first serious words Kenrick had ever heard from Wilton; but he did not choose to heed them, and only said, after a pause—
“Other fellows better than you? Not a bit of it. Less plucky, perhaps; greater hypocrites, certainly; but you are the jolliest of them all, Ra.”