"Well," said Maurice, "will you, or won't you? Will you make yourself beastly miserable for the sake of a brave girl? She can't help being a girl, but she can help being brave, and she is—oh, you don't know how plucky she is. It puts me to shame the way she works, and the way she denies herself. Do you know what she's got in the back of her head? To send me to Oxford by and by, to make a man of me, and to provide a comfortable home for the other boys when they are older and need it more. I couldn't ask a woman to put herself out to give Cecil this chance, but I thought a man might, if he were worth the name."
"Upon my word, you're pretty frank, you British schoolboy," said Danvers; but his eyes danced again, and he ceased to cast loving glances in the direction of his bacon.
"Will you, or won't you?" said Maurice; "that's just it? You needn't deliberate—you can say a frank 'yes' or 'no.' I don't pretend you'll like it—of course you won't; but maybe—— Oh, I don't want to cant, but if there's anything in those words, 'It is more blessed——'"
"I know 'em; you needn't finish them," interrupted Danvers. "It's 'yes' or 'no,' then. What a queer world this is! Here am I, bullied by one of the boys in my class, a young ruffian who murders his Homer, and nearly turns my brain over his Virgil; he comes and beards me in my own private den, with the most astounding, outrageous, unheard-of proposal—and it's 'yes' or 'no' with the monkey. What will you do if I say 'no,' sir?"
"I'll be as I was before," answered Maurice; "but you won't, sir."
"I won't! Is that the way you take it?"
"No, sir; I see yielding in your face. I wouldn't have come to another master in the whole school."
"You needn't blarney me, Ross; blarney is the last straw. Now, you've stated the fact from your point of view. Allow me to tell you what this will mean to me. Lunacy, an asylum, in three months. Tell me to my face, is there a girl living who is worth that?"