“But I know exactly what it is like,” Gilly said. “If I did not, I suppose I should have been just like all the rest, and should have handed you back to your tutor.”
“You will not!” Tom cried, in swift alarm.
Gilly smiled at him. “No, not quite immediately! But I think you must go back to your father in the end, you know. I daresay he is very much attached to you, and you will not like to cause him too much anxiety.”
“N-no,” agreed Tom rather grudgingly. “Of course I shall have to return, but I won’t do so until I have been to London! That would be worth anything! He will be in one of his grand fusses, I suppose, and I shall catch it when I do go back, but—”
“You might not,” the Duke said.
“You do not know Pa, sir!” replied Tom feelingly. “Or Snape!”
“Very true, but it Is possible that if he knows you have been my guest, and if I meet your papa, and talk to him, he may not, after all, be so very angry with you.”
Tom surveyed him doubtfully. “Well, I think he will be,” he said. “I don’t care, mind you, for I can stand a lick or two, but Pa is the biggest ironmaster in all our set, and as rich as—as Crassus, and he has the deuce of a temper! And he is for ever wanting to bring me up a gentleman, and he won’t have me do anything vulgar and jolly, or know the out-and-out fellows in Kettering, and he is bound to be in a rage over this!”
“Well, that would be very terrible,” said the Duke, in his tranquil way. “Perhaps you had best return to Mr. Snape after all.”
“No, that I won’t do!” declared Tom, with great resolution.