While Harry and his father were devising some way of providing employment for Tom, John Simpson and his son Rupert were also discussing his affairs, but in a different spirit.
“I wouldn’t have discharged him if he hadn’t been impudent,” said Squire Simpson.
“Just what I thought, pa. He’s awfully independent. He is very rude to me.”
“He will be his own enemy,” said the squire, sententiously.
“You won’t take him back, pa, will you?”
“Not unless he makes me an humble apology.”
“Then he’ll never come back,” thought Rupert. “He’s too proud to do that.”
John Simpson had one source of regret. His enemy, as he considered him, Darius Darke, had been cut off in a terrible manner, but at the same time the five hundred dollars which he had given him had also been consumed.
“What a fool I was not to put him off till morning!” he reflected, with vexation. “Then I would have saved five hundred dollars. But it never occurred to me. However, I am glad to be rid of him even at that price. I am sorry he fell in with Tom Thatcher, and told him that story about his father’s having twenty-five thousand dollars. Tom was already inclined to be suspicious. I wish he were out of the village—he and his whole family. If he can’t find work, he may have to go yet. The family can’t live on nothing, and the cottage isn’t worth much. I wish I had a mortgage on it.”