Chapter Fourteen.
Holt and his Help.
Nothing more was heard by Hugh, or any one else, of Lamb’s debt. The creditor himself chose to say nothing about it, so much was he annoyed at being considered fond of money; but he was sure that Lamb’s pockets were filled, from time to time, as he was seen eating good things in by-corners when everybody knew that his credit with his companions, and with all the neighbouring tradespeople, was exhausted. It was surprising that anybody could care so much for a shilling’s worth of tarts or fruit as to be at the trouble of any concealment, or of constantly getting out of Hugh’s way, rather than pay, and have done with it. When Lamb was seen munching or skulking, Firth sometimes asked Hugh whether he had got justice yet in that quarter: and then Hugh laughed; and Firth saw that he had gained something quite as good,—a power of doing without it good-humouredly, from those who were so unhappy as not to understand or care for justice.
In one respect, however, Hugh was still within Lamb’s power. When Lamb was not skulking, he was much given to boasting; and his boasts were chiefly about what a great man he was to be in India. He was really destined for India; and his own opinion was that he should have a fine life of it there, riding on an elephant, with a score of servants always about him, spending all his mornings in shooting, and all his evenings at dinners and balls. Hugh did not care about the servants, sport, or dissipation; and he did not see why any one should cross the globe to enjoy things like these, which might be had at home. But it did make him sigh to think that a lazy and ignorant boy should be destined to live among those mountains, and that tropical verdure of which he had read,—to see the cave-temples, the tanks, the prodigious rivers, and the natives and their ways, of which his imagination was full, while he must stay at home, and see nothing beyond London, as long as he lived. He did not grudge Holt his prospect of going to India; for Holt was an improved and improving boy, and had, moreover, a father there whom he loved very much: but Hugh could never hear Lamb’s talk about India without being ready to cry.
“Do you think,” he said to Holt, “that all this is true?”
“It is true that he is to go to India. His father has interest to get him out. But I do not believe he will like it so well as he thinks. At least, I know that my father has to work pretty hard,—harder than Lamb ever worked, or ever will work.”
“O dear! I wish I could go and do the work; and I would send all the money home to him (except just enough to live upon), and then he might go to dinners and balls in London, as much as he liked, and I could see the Hindoos and the cave-temples.”
“That is another mistake of Lamb’s,—about the quantity of money,” said Holt. “I do not believe anybody in India is so rich as he pretends, if they work ever so hard. I know my father works as hard as anybody, and he is not rich; and I know the same of several of his friends. So it is hardly likely that such a lazy dunce as Lamb should be rich, unless he has a fortune here at home; and if he had that, I do not believe he would take the trouble of going so far, to suffer by the heat.”
“I should not mind the heat,” sighed Hugh, “if I could go. You must write to me, Holt, all about India. Write me the longest letters in the world; and tell me everything you can think of about the natives, and Juggernaut’s Car.”