“Oh, no, indeed, Ruthven! I am getting on very well here, and am very contented with my lot, and I could not think of troubling your father in the matter.”
“Well, you will trouble him a great deal,” Ruthven said, “if you don't come, for you will trouble him to come all the way down here. He was quite worried when he first heard of your disappearance, and has been almost as excited as I have over the search for you.
“You are really a foolish fellow, Frank,” he went on more seriously; “I really didn't think it of you. Here you save the lives of four or five fellows and put all their friends under a tremendous obligation, and then you run away and hide yourself as if you were ashamed. I tell you you can't do it. A fellow has no more right to get rid of obligations than he has to run away without paying his debts. It would be a burden on your mind if you had a heavy debt you couldn't pay, and you would have a right to be angry if, when you were perfectly able to pay, your creditor refused to take the money. That's just the position in which you've placed my father. Well, anyhow, you've got to come and see him, or he's got to come and see you. I know he has something in his mind's eye which will just suit you, though he did not tell me what it was. For the last day or two he has been particularly anxious about finding you. Only yesterday when I came back and reported that I had been to half a dozen places without success, he said, 'Confound the young rascal, where can he be hiding? Here are the days slipping by and it will be too late. If you don't find him in a day or two, Dick, I will set the police after him—say he has committed a murder or broken into a bank and offer a reward for his apprehension.' So you must either come home with me this afternoon, or you will be having my father down here tonight.”
“Of course, Ruthven,” Frank said, “I would not put your father to such trouble. He is very kind to have taken so much interest in me, only I hate—”
“Oh, nonsense! I hate to see such beastly stuck up pride, putting your own dignity above the affection of your friends; for that's really what it comes to, old boy, if you look it fairly in the face.”
Frank flushed a little and was silent for a minute or two.
“I suppose you are right, Ruthven; but it is a little hard for a fellow—”
“Oh, no, it isn't,” Ruthven said. “If you'd got into a scrape from some fault of your own one could understand it, although even then there would be no reason for you to cut your old friends till they cut you. Young Goodall, who lives over at Bayswater, has been over four or five times to ask me if I have succeeded in finding you, and I have had letters from Handcock, and Childers, and Jackson. Just as if a fellow had got nothing to do but to write letters. How long will you be before you can come out?”
“There is Mr. Horton just come in,” Frank said. “I have no doubt he will let me go at once.”
The old naturalist at once assented upon Frank's telling him that a friend had come who wished him to go out.