Percy opened his eyes in unfeigned astonishment. The grave, studious, young pupil-teacher was no favorite with the other boys, who thought him priggish and rather arbitrary; but at least he was always courteous in his dealings with them, and, indeed, rather prided himself upon his manners.
"Well, that's one way to take it," said the younger boy, resentfully, his regrets taking flight at once as they met with this apparently ungracious reception. "Accidents will happen, and, after all, it was just as much your fault as mine."
"I would not try to appear innocent. It will hardly serve your turn under the circumstances," said Seabrooke, still with the same disagreeable tone and manner. "But let me tell you, Mr. Neville, that I have a great mind to report you for trespassing in my quarters. You may think you have the right to demand your own if you choose to break a compact made for your own good, but you have no right to be guilty of the liberty and meanness of ransacking another man's belongings in search of it."
"I don't know what you are talking about. What do you mean?" exclaimed the astonished Percy, really for the moment forgetting that Seabrooke had anything belonging to him in his keeping.
But Seabrooke only answered, as he turned away, "Such an assumption of innocence is quite thrown away, I repeat, sir and the next time you meddle with my things or places, you shall suffer for it, I assure you."
But Percy seized him by the arm.
"You shall not leave me this way," he said. "What do you mean?
Explain yourself. Who touched your things?"
"It shows what you are," answered Seabrooke, continuing his reproaches, instead of giving the straightforward answer which he considered unnecessary, "that you have not the decent manliness to demand that which rightfully belonged to you because you were ashamed of your own folly and weakness, but must go and ransack in my quarters to find your money. Let me go; I wish nothing more to do with you."
Light broke upon the bewildered Percy. Seabrooke was accusing him of searching for and taking the money he had confided to his care, but which he, Percy, certainly had no right to recover by such means.
"You say I took back my money without asking you for it, and hunted it out from your places?" he asked, incredulously, but fiercely.