“Can you give us an idea what you said?” inquired Oxley drily, while Macfarlane showed that he was listening.
“Well, I said various things; but the gist was that his friends were ashamed of him—not about the cash, you know, but about the conduct, and that he was little better than a swindler: yes, I did.”
Macfarlane smoked furiously.
“No, Oxley, he made no reply. Not one word of defence: he simply turned round and walked away. I suppose you think that I ought not to have been so hard on him?”
“Well, no doubt you did what seemed right, and Hatchard has not been quite straight; but I now understand what I saw two hours ago, and what gave me a shock. You favoured him with your mind about eleven, I should guess? Yes: then at twelve he came out of a restaurant in Dale Street as if he had been drinking. That is the first time Hatchard ever did that kind of thing, I believe, but it will not be the last: his face was quite changed—half woe-begone and half desperate.”
“If Thomas takes to tasting”—Macfarlane was much moved—“it's all over with him: he's such a soft-hearted chap.”
“Nonsense, you're making too much of it; but I was a trifle sharp, perhaps: he's been very provoking, and any other man would have said the same except you two fellows, and the one of you is so charitable that he would find an excuse for a pickpocket, and the other is so cannie that he can't make up his mind to say anything.”
After which there was a pause.
“Yes,” began Oxley again, falling into ancient history, “he has gone off form a bit—the best may do so at a time—but Tommy wasn't half a bad fellow once: he got a study at Soundbergh before me, and he was very decent with it, letting me do 'prep.' in it before exams.; and I never counted him sidey, did you, B.?”
“I should think not; I'll say that for him at any rate, there wasn't one scrap of humbug in Tommy: why, he was a prefect when I was in the fourth, and he didn't mind although a chap 'ragged' and chaffed him; he was the jolliest 'pre.' in the whole school. It was perhaps rather hard lines to slang him to-day,—I half wish I hadn't.”