“Quick as you like, sir,” said Mr William Forth Burge, who showed the new side of his character. “I’ve been in trade, and I know what’s what. Now, sir, I’m the friend of the boy’s sister; father dead—mother a baby. Business is business. Prosecute the boy, and you put him in prison, and spend more money; you get none back. Forgive him, and take him on again, and, if it’s fifty pounds, I’ll pay what’s lost.”
Then followed a long argument, out of which Mr William Forth Burge came away a hundred pounds poorer, and with Percy Thorne free to begin the world again, but handicapped with a blurred character.
That evening they were back at Plumton.
“But there’s going to be no prosecution, or anything of that sort, Miss Thorne; and, till we hear of something to suit him, he shall stop at my house and do clerk’s work in my office.”
“But I feel sure you have been paying away money to extricate him from this terrible difficulty, Mr Burge,” cried Hazel.
“Well, and suppose I have,” he said, smiling; “I’ve a right to do what I like with my own money, and it’s all spent for the benefit of our schools.”
“But, Mr Burge,” cried Hazel eagerly, and speaking with the tears running down her cheeks, “how can I ever repay you?”
“Oh, I’ll send in my bill some day,” he said hastily. “But as I was going to say, Master Percy shall stay at my place for the present. I could easily place him at a butcher’s or a meat salesman’s, but that ain’t genteel enough for a boy like him. So just you wait a bit and—”
“See,” he would have said, but all this time he had been backing towards the door to avoid Hazel’s thanks, and he escaped before his final word was spoken.
“There’s something about that man I don’t quite like,” said Mrs Thorne as soon as their visitor had gone.