Maurice lounged against the window-sill. There was literally not a disengaged seat in the room. Mr. Danvers had described it as kitchen, bedroom, parlor, but it was also, and above all these things, library. Books on the floor, books crowding the bookcases, books in heaps on the windowsill, books on the bed, books on every table and every chair, marked all too vividly the tastes of John Danvers, the classical master of the Grammar School, the most hard-headed, soft-hearted, irascible-tempered, touchiest, most generous man in the whole of Hazlewick.
"Now, then, Ross, you can state your business," said Danvers, as he munched his bacon with appetite. "Do you see that pile of exercise books there? I've got to look through them all between now and ten o'clock. They are every one of them the choice productions of idiotic asses, so you may imagine the treat which lies before me. Now then, Ross, speak out."
"I'd best plump it," said Maurice. "I want to know, Mr. Danvers, if you'll board me and my three brothers? Don't say 'no,' till you think it over. We won't be any trouble, and you've heaps of room in this house."
When Maurice made this astounding proposal, Mr. Danvers' face became a study. His mouth opened until it formed itself into a round O; his blue eyes twinkled with the queerest mixture of anger and uncontrollable mirth. He was in the act of helping himself to a delicious morsel of frizzled bacon; he kept his fork suspended in mid air.
"Please don't speak for a minute," said Maurice, whose face was crimson. "I knew you'd funk it; I knew you'd hate it; I know perfectly well it would be beastly for you. All the same, I want you to do it; it will be beastly for us too, but I want you to do it. Yes, you shall do it, because—because——"
"Your reasons, lad?" said John Danvers.
He sprang to his feet, pushed aside his meal with a clatter, walked to the door, turned the key in it, and then strode up to where Maurice was, half sitting, half lounging.
"Now, out with your reasons, and be quick!" he said. "I don't want my bacon spoiled and my evening spoiled; I'll turn you out of this room, you young rascal, if you're not quick! Why am I to turn my life into an inferno? Now, be quick; out with your thought, lad!"
Mr. Danvers' last sentence was spoken with a certain softening of voice which encouraged Maurice to proceed.
"I'm desperate," he said, "and desperate people come to desperate resolves. It is for Cecil; she's the best girl in all the world, and the cleverest; but she's not half educated. She was at a school, not a tip-top school, but just a middling sort of place. I wish now she'd gone to a decent High School, but mother didn't like High Schools, and anyhow, there she is, nearly eighteen, with more talents than all the rest of us put together, but shut out of everything, because she hasn't got certificates, and all that sort of rot. Well, she's got a chance; an old lady, a friend of ours, wants to pay her expenses at Redgarth College. Perhaps you've heard of Redgarth, Mr. Danvers?"