"I don't know anything about a check," answered Percy, for Colonel Rush had not mentioned that little circumstance to the junior portion of his family, "but I do know that the girls sent your sister a Christmas box, for I helped to pack it myself, and they are all agog about some prize they hope to win among them, a prize which will give them somehow, an artist education, which they can give to some girl who needs it. I don't know exactly how it is, only I do know they are all just agog about it, and they want it for your sister Gladys, at least for a girl of that name. But I believe I ought not to have spoken of that; it is only a chance, you know; there are ever so many girls to try for the prize, and our girls may not gain it."
"And my sister don't want the chance," said Harley, the stubborn pride which was one of his characteristics, up in arms at once. "We may be and are poor, but we will not ask for charity."
"Well, you needn't be so highty-tighty about it," said Percy, taking a more sensible view of the matter than his older companion did. "I don't call it charity, and if it is, it comes from somebody who is dead, so one needn't feel any special obligation to the girls. It is only that they earn the right to say to whom the gift shall go; they don't give it. And," he added, with his usual happy faculty for saying the wrong thing, "I don't see why you should be so stiff about it when you yourself"—he paused, seeing by the dark look which came over Seabrooke's face that he had touched upon a sore point.
"You would say," said Harley, stiffly, "when I accept favors from Dr. Leacraft for myself; but you will please remember that I, at least, give some equivalent for my tuition, so I am not altogether a charity scholar. And it is my object to provide for my sister myself, and I still insist that you shall pay me what you owe me, Neville. If your friends earned forty scholarships for Gladys, that would make no difference in my just demands."
"Nobody asked that it should!" exclaimed Percy, flying into one of the rare passions to which his amiable, easy-going nature would occasionally lapse under great provocation, "nobody asked that it should; and you are"—and here he launched into some most uncomplimentary remarks, and then dashed from the room, leaving Harley to feel that he had made a great mistake, and missed, by the insinuation that Percy fancied he would abate his demands for restitution, an opportunity of influencing the boy, who was easily led for either good or evil.
The result of this was, on Percy's part, another frantic appeal to Lena to find some means of helping him before Easter, that Seabrooke was very hard on him and determined not to spare him.
This letter would never have reached Lena had it not been delivered into the hands of Colonel Rush, who met the postman at the foot of his own steps, and took this with others from him. For Hannah, following out her policy that the end justified the means, and undeterred by the scrape into which Percy had brought himself by means somewhat similar, kept on the watch for letters for Lena, determined to hide and destroy any which should come from Percy.
She fancied that she had not yet made up her mind to the course she would pursue; but she really had done so, though the faithful old nurse clung till the last moment to the cherished gold, with a faint hope that something might yet chance to save it.
The colonel went up to pay a little visit to Lena, and came down looking rather perturbed and anxious.
"That child continues to look badly," he said to Mrs. Rush, "and she appears to me to have something on her mind. Do you think it is possible, now that Russell is better?"