“Well, don’t lie down and die anywhere near where I’m camping, sir, because it would be very unpleasant, and spoil my journey. What time do you start back, now you can go decently?”
“Now, sir,” said Cyril, and he turned sharply and took a step to go, but the colonel caught him by the shoulder.
“Come and have your breakfast first, sir. If you can behave badly to your father and mother, I cannot, by ill-treating their son. No nonsense: come and sit down, and I’m very glad to see that you are beginning to realise what a mad trick it is of which you have been guilty.—Ready, Manning?”
“Yes, sir,” came back from the fire, and a minute later they were all seated in silence, partaking of the hot coffee and fried bacon made ready for them by Manning, who gave Cyril a bit of a grin as he saw the change in his appearance.
The colonel ate heartily, but Perry’s appetite was very poor; and Cyril could hardly master a morsel, in spite of the colonel’s manner becoming less harsh.
“Come, boy,” he said, “eat. You’ve a long journey back, and you’d better make much of the provisions, now you have a chance. I’ll send your father a line in pencil for you to bear, and to exonerate me from causing him so much uneasiness. By the way, how many days do you think it will take you to get back?”
Cyril tried to answer indignantly, but the words seemed to stick in his throat; and Perry’s face grew red at what he considered to be his father’s harsh treatment of the lad whom he looked upon as his friend. There was a painful silence, then, for some minutes, during which the colonel went on with his breakfast, and Perry sat with his eyes dropped, unable to get any farther.
All at once, Cyril spoke out in a half-suffocated voice, as he looked up indignantly at the colonel. “Isn’t it too hard upon me, sir,” he cried, “to keep on punishing me like this? You know I cannot go back, or I should have gone long ago.”
“I want to punish you, sir, because I want to make you feel what a mad thing you have done, and how bitterly cruel you have been to a father who trusted in your honour as a gentleman, and a mother whose affection for you was without bounds.”
“But, don’t I know all that?” cried Cyril, springing up and speaking passionately now. “Hasn’t it been torturing me for days past; and wouldn’t I have gone back if I could, and owned how wrong I had been?”