"It can't be true!"
"There's something else we have to thank Mr. Plunkett for!"
"It's wicked and unjust," cried Winnie. "He knows as well as I do that you didn't do it. I don't know how he can dare to pretend he doesn't. It's enough to drive one mad; but there's one thing, Myrrh, if you don't go, I won't; Cousin Jane needn't think I will."
"It's not true; it's only Emma's rubbish," decided Bobbo.
"Let us go and ask Nessa," said Murtagh, with a curious kind of quietness in his voice, and while the others dashed off impatiently to Nessa's room, he, thrusting his hands into his pockets, walked slowly after them.
CHAPTER XXIII.
It was only too true. It was difficult to say with whom the idea had first originated, but after much talking with Emma and Mr. Plunkett, Cousin Jane had announced that she could not take Murtagh with her unless he were ready to confess his guilt. Mr. Blair was annoyed, but there was no help for it. It was true that Murtagh had not been altogether proved innocent. He could not be till Pat was found, and till he was, everybody had, of course, a right to their own opinion.
The children were bitterly indignant, but Murtagh still said nothing. The injustice seemed to him at first too impossible to be true; and when he realized that it was true, the feelings it roused against Mr. Plunkett were such he would have found it difficult to express. A sort of astonished contempt filled his mind. He had not thought before that Mr. Plunkett could be so bad as that, and if at times the thought of his disappointment roused in him hot indignation, this new feeling of sheer disgust made him shrink from even thinking much of Mr. Plunkett.
Frankie's disappointment was beyond expression. For perhaps the first time in his life he behaved like the spoilt child he was. He would not go to the sea at all, he said, or if he did, he wouldn't take a bit of trouble to get well. He had set his heart on having his cousin with him, and his mother vainly proposed instead companion after companion. He didn't care for any of them, he said, and all the pleasure of his winter was gone.