“Please don’t be hard on me, sir; I have been a scoundrel, but if you—you—could give me another chance—”
Boy prevailed, and all Percy Thorne’s manliness went to the winds. He was very young yet in spite of his size, and, try how he would to keep them back, the weak tears came, and he could not say another word.
“Give you another chance, eh?” said the visitor sharply. “That’s all very well, but we’ve got to get you out of this scrape first. Your people, Suthers, Rubley, and Spark, write as if they meant to prosecute you for robbing them.”
“But I meant to pay it again, sir—I did indeed!” cried Percy.
“Yes: of course. That’s what all fellows who go in for a bit of a spree with other people’s coin say to themselves, so as to give them Dutch courage. But it won’t do!”
“But indeed I should have paid it sir.”
“If you had won, which wasn’t likely, boy. Only one in a thousand wins, my lad, and it’s always somebody else—not you. Now then, suppose I set to work and get these people, Suthers, Rubley, and Spark”—he repeated the names with great gusto—“to quash the prosecution on account of your youth and the respectability of your relations, what would you do?”
“Oh, I’d be so grateful, sir! I’d never, never bet again, or put money on horses, or—”
“Make a fool of yourself, eh?”
“No, sir; indeed, indeed I would not.”