"Well, I think he might have taken the money, so long as he is not too proud to wear Neil Barnard's old clothes. I knew them the minute I saw them."
"It's one thing to take a present given in kindness, and another thing altogether to take it when it is thrown in your face," said Harry. "You think you can do just what you like because you are rich; but there are some things money won't buy. Poor as he is, Phil is a better gentleman than you are."
"See if I don't tell Miss Isabel of him, anyway," said Horace.
"Do, and I'll tell her of you. Come, boys, let's go into school."
Phil was sitting quietly in his place When the boys went in. They all spoke kindly to him except Horace, who felt very mean and very angry.
Horace had not had much chance to learn to be a good boy. He was the only son of a very foolish, uneducated father and mother, who spoiled him in every way, and made him think he was a person of very great consequence. Mr. and Mrs. Maberly thought and talked of nothing but money. They valued things for what they cost, and always told the price of everything to their visitors. It was quite natural, therefore, that Horace should do the same. Moreover, Horace had all his life been allowed to do any piece of mischief that came into his head; to torment cats, and dogs, and horses, and everything that fell in his way.
"He had such spirits," his mother said, "and bright boys are always full of mischief—" a very great mistake, by the way.
But Mr. Maberly was at last beginning to think that Horace was rather too full of mischief, especially since he had utterly spoiled a valuable horse which he had taken out without leave and then wantonly and cruelly over-driven. The horse would never be good for anything again.
"It is a dead loss of a thousand dollars," Mr. Maberly said to Horace, angrily. But he never uttered a word about the disobedience, nor about the cruelty to the horse.
Brought up in this way, it was perhaps no great wonder that Horace should think it good fun to let the goat and hens into Phil's garden, and then watch behind a rock to see what he would do and say.