"'T was I who cautioned the children against saying anything disparaging of Radcliff's character in Lavinia dear's presence. I had such faith in the stock! and now to think how I have been deluded! The hartshorn, Lavinia dear!"
"Seems to me you make a pile of talk about trifles!" Radcliff said with a sneer. "I owe an apology to this young lady. But she knows I meant no harm,—only my foolish fun. As for the horse, the owner has got him again; and so I don't see but it's all right."
"It's all right enough, as far as I am concerned," said Jack. "I won't say a word about the trouble and expense you put me to. But, whether taking my horse as you did was stealing or not, you sold him, you obtained money under false pretences, you swindled an honest man."
"Well, that can't be helped now," said Radcliff, with a scoffing laugh. "A feller is obliged sometimes to do things that may not be exactly on the square."
"I don't know about anybody's being obliged to go off and play the gentleman (if that's what you call it), and have a good time (if there's any good in such a time), at somebody else's expense. I call such conduct simply scoundrelism," said Jack, his strong feeling on the subject breaking forth in plain speech and ringing tones. "And I determined, if I ever caught you, to have you punished."
"O, well! go ahead! put it through! indulge!" said Radcliff, folding his arms, and stretching out his legs with an air of easy and reckless insolence, but suddenly drawing up one of them, as he noticed the tear Lion's teeth had made. "Guess I can stand it if the others can. What do you say, Uncle Lord? Give me up as a bad job, eh?"
"Hem!" Lord coughed, and rubbed his chin with his palm. "If this sort of conduct is to continue, the crisis may as well come now, I suppose, as later; and, unless you give a solemn pledge to alter your course, I shall let it come."
"O, I'll give the solem'est sort of a pledge!" Radcliff replied.
"You will notice—ahem!—a change in our family," Lord went on. "The boys have applied themselves to business,—in plain terms, gone to work. Although I have said little on the subject, I have silently observed, and I am free to confess that I have been gratified. Since our circumstances are what they are, they have done well,—I may add, they have done nobly."
"Fan me, Lavinia dear!" whispered Caroline.