“You mean you’ve come here to Kincton to teach that little cur—I hope you lick him a trifle?” inquired Trevor.
“Yes; but I don’t lick him, and in fact the situation—that’s the right word, isn’t it?—is very, what’s the word? We get on quietly, and they’re all very civil to me, and it’s very good of a swell like you to talk so to a poor devil of a pedagogue.”
“Come Maubray, none of your chaff. I knew by your aunt’s manner there was a screw loose somewhere—something about a living, wasn’t there?”
It was plain, however, that Trevor was thinking of something that concerned him more nearly than William Maubray’s squabble with his aunt.
“It’s a long story,” said William; “she wants me to go into the Church, and I won’t, and so there’s a quarrel, and that’s all.”
“And the supplies stopped?” exclaimed Trevor.
“Well, I think she would not stop them; she is very generous—but I could not, you know, it’s time I should do something: and I’m here—Doctor Sprague thought it right—under the name of Herbert. They know it’s an assumed name—we took care to tell them that—so there’s no trick, you know, and please don’t say my name’s Maubray, it would half break my aunt’s heart.”
“Secret as the tomb, Herbert, I’ll remember, and—and I hope that nasty little dog won’t be coming back in a minute—it’s a good way though—and, by Jove! it’s very comical, though, and almost providential this, meeting you here, for I did want a friend to talk a bit to, awfully, and you know, Maubray, I really have always looked on you in the light of a friend.”
There was a consciousness of the honour which such a distinction conferred in the tone in which this was spoken, and William, in the cynical irony which, in this interview, he had used with Trevor, interposed with—
“A humble friend, and very much flattered.”