“Well, it was sufficient to explain it all to me,” Carlyon admitted. “Once a performing bear had entered Nicky’s orbit the rest was inevitable. Have you been waiting up for me? You should not have done so.”
“You look fagged to death!” John said, in his brusque way. “Sit down, while I pour you a glass of wine!”
Carlyon took a chair by the fire, and stretched his booted legs out before him. “I am tired,” he owned. “I hope I may not be called upon to attend any more such deathbeds. But we shall brush through this very well if Hitchin does not let his loyalty run away with him.”
John handed him a glass of wine. “Oh, I don’t doubt we shall come about, but we should never have been put into such a situation! It is what I have been saying to you forever, Ned: you are by far too easy with Nick! There’s not an ounce of harm in the boy, but he is a great deal too wild. It is as I said a while back: he plunges into scrapes and then runs to you to extricate him.”
“Well, thank God he does run to me!” said Carlyon.
“Yes, that is all very well, but why you must needs encourage him to steal bears, and to—”
“My dear John, in what possible way can I be held to have encouraged Nick to do any such thing?” protested Carlyon.
“No, well, I did not mean that precisely, but I know as well as if I had been present that you have not told him how wrong he has been!”
“He knows that without my telling him.”
“He needs to be hauled well over the coals!”