“But why should you wish to go?”
“There are several reasons. One is, I shall never stay anywhere on sufferance. If I am not to be trusted at a distance, I shall certainly not stay to give my employers the trouble of keeping an eye upon me.”
His own eye flashed as he spoke.
“But, Harry, man, that is nonsense, you know.”
It was not his master, but his friend, that spoke, and Harry was a little thrown off his guard by the change in his tone.
“I do not think it is nonsense,” said he.
“Harry, I have not been thinking of myself in all this, nor of the interests of the firm. Let me say, once for all, that I should consider them perfectly safe in your hands, in all respects. Harry, the world would look darker to me the day I could not trust your father’s son.”
Harry made no answer.
“It is of you I have been thinking, in the hesitation that has seemed so unreasonable to you. Harry, when I think of the home you have here, and of the wretched changed life that awaits you there, it seems selfish—wrong to wish to send you away.”
Harry made a gesture of dissent, and muttered something about the impossibility of staying always at home.