The Lost Heir

by G. A. Henty

"So, possibly, would our own forefathers, Colonel."

"Humph! They had a lot more common sense in those days than they have now, Mr. Pettigrew. There was no sentimentality about them; they were short and sharp in their measures. They were men, sir—men. They drank like men, and they fought like men; there was sterling stuff in them; they didn't weaken their bodies by drinking slops, or their minds by reading newspapers."

"Well, Colonel Bulstrode," Hilda said, smiling, "if it is not contrary to your convictions, we will go upstairs and have a cup of tea. No doubt there is something to be said for the old days, but there is a good deal to be said on the other side of the question, too."

When they went upstairs Dr. Leeds sat down by Netta.

"I am afraid that you blame me for what I did, Dr. Leeds," she said timidly.

"No, I do not blame you at all for doing it, but I do think that you ought to have consulted us all before undertaking it. Your intention was a noble one, but the risk that you ran was so great that certainly I should not have felt justified in allowing you to undertake it, had I had any voice in the matter."

"But I cannot see that it was dangerous," the girl said. "He could not have knocked me down and beaten me, even if he had caught me with my eye at the peep-hole. He could only have called up Johnstone and denounced me as an eavesdropper, and at the worst I should only have been turned straight out of the house."

"I do not think that that would have been at all his course of action. I believe, on the contrary, that although he would have spoken angrily to you, he would have said nothing to the lodging-house keeper. He would have at once guessed that you had not taken all this trouble merely to gratify a silly curiosity, but would have been sure that you had been employed as a spy. What he would have done I do not know, but he would certainly have had you watched as you watched him, and he would, in his conversation with his confederates, have dropped clews that would have sent us all off on wild-goose chases. I don't think that he would have ventured on getting you removed, for he would have known that he would have been suspected of foul play at once by those who had employed you. I hope you will give me a promise that you will never undertake any plan without consulting Miss Covington and myself. You can hardly realize what anxiety I have suffered while you have been away."

"I will promise willingly, Dr. Leeds. I did not think anything of the danger, and do not believe even now there was any; but I do think that Hilda would not have heard of my going as a servant, and that you would not have approved of it. Still, as I saw no harm in it myself, I thought that for once I would act upon my own ideas."

"There are circumstances under which no one need disapprove of a lady acting as a servant," he said quietly. "If a family misfortune has happened, and she has to earn her own living, I think that there are many who would be far happier in the position of a servant in a good family, than as an ill-paid and over-worked governess. The one is at least her own mistress, to a large extent, as long as she does her work properly; the other can never call her time her own. In your case, certainly, the kind object with which you undertook the task was a full justification of it, had you not been matching yourself against an unscrupulous villain, who, had he detected your disguise, would have practically hesitated at nothing to rid himself of you. It happened, too, in this case you were one of the few persons who could have succeeded; for, as you say, it would have been next to impossible for anyone unpossessed of your peculiar faculty to have overheard a conversation, doubtless conducted in a somewhat low voice, through such a hole as you made."