Mrs Lavington looked wildly from one to the other, but there was a dead silence, and in a few minutes the poor woman’s manner had entirely changed. When she first spoke it was as the timid, shrinking, affectionate woman; now it was as the mother speaking in defence of her child.
“I say it is not true,” she cried. “You undertook to be a father to my poor boy, and now you charge him with having robbed you.”
“Laura, be calm,” said the old merchant, quietly; “and you had better take Kitty back home and wait.”
“You have always been too stern and harsh with the poor boy,” continued Mrs Lavington, without heeding him. “I was foolish ever to come and trust to you. How dare you charge him with such a crime?”
“I did not charge him with any crime, my dear Laura,” said the old merchant, gravely.
“Then it is not true?”
“It is true that I have been robbed, and that the man whom Lindon has persisted in making his companion, in spite of all I have said to the contrary, has charged him with the base, contemptible crime of robbing the master who trusted him.”
“But it is not true, Josiah; and that is what you always do, treat my poor boy as if he were your servant instead of your nephew—your sister’s boy.”
“I treat Lindon as if he were my son when we are at home,” said the old man, quietly. “When we are here at the office I treat him as my clerk, and I trust him to look after my interests, and to defend me from dishonest people.”
Don looked up, and it was on his lips to say, “Indeed, uncle, I always have done so,” when the old man’s next words seemed to chill and harden him.