“At any rate,” Somers added, “I for one won’t have you as a fag any longer, and I shouldn’t think that anyone else would either.”
With which cutting remark he left Walter to his reflections.
Chapter Nine.
Penitence.
“If hearty sorrow
Be a sufficient ransom for offence,
I tender it here; I do as truly suffer
As e’er I did commit.”
Two Gentlemen of Verona.—Act five, scene 4.
Next morning Walter was reconducted to the private room, and there, with a kind of dull pain in head and heart, awaited the sentence which was to decide his fate. His fancy had left Saint Winifred’s altogether; it was solely occupied with Semlyn, and the dear society at home. Walter was rehearsing again and again in his mind the scene of his return; what he should say to his father; how he should dry his mother’s tears; and how he should bear himself, on his return, towards his little brothers and sisters. Would he, expelled from Saint Winifred’s, ever be able to look anyone in the face again at home?
While he was brooding over these fancies, someone, breathless with haste, ran up to his room, and again a note was thrust underneath the door. He seized it quickly, and read—
“Dear Walter,—I am so glad to be the first to tell you that you are not to be expelled. Paton has begged you off. No time for more. I have slipped away before morning school to leave you this news, and can’t stay lest I should be caught. Good-bye, from your ever affectionate friend,
“H.K.”