Dexter gave Peter a reproachful look, and limped after the doctor.
“Well, let’s go and have that glass o’ beer Peter,” said Dan’l. “Talk about pickles!”
“My!” said Peter, slapping his leg again. “Why, it were him we see every night, and as swum across the river. Why, he must ha’ swum back when I’d gone. I say, Dan’l, what a game!”
“Hah!” ejaculated the old gardener, wiping his mouth in anticipation. “It’s my b’lief, Peter, as that there boy’ll turn out either a reg’lar good un, or ’bout the wust as ever stepped.”
“Now, sir!” said the doctor, as he closed the door of the library, and then with a stern look at the grimy object before him took a seat opposite Helen. “What have you to say for yourself!”
Dexter glanced at Helen, who would not meet his gaze.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Oh, you have nothing to say! Let me see, now. You were sent to a good school to be taught by a gentleman, and treated as a special pupil. You behaved badly. You ran away. You came here and made yourself a den; you have been living by plunder ever since, and you have nothing to say!”
Dexter was silent, but his face was working, his lips quivering, and his throat seemed to swell as his breath came thick and fast.
At last his words came in a passionate appeal, but in a broken, disjointed way; and it seemed as if the memory of all he had suffered roused his nature into a passionate fit of indignation against the author of all the trouble.