Boy said not a word. He grew a little paler still, but was quite silent.
“And then,” went on Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir graciously, “you would have had all her thousands of pounds when she was dead!”
This word broke up Boy’s unnatural composure.
“Dead! When she was dead! Oh, I don’t want Miss Letty to die!” he said, the colour rushing up hotly to his brows. “No—no! I don’t want any money—— I wouldn’t have it—not if Miss Letty had to die first! I would rather die myself!”
And unable to control his rising emotion, he suddenly burst into tears and ran out of the room.
Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir gazed after him helplessly. Then rising, she paced the room slowly to and fro with elephantine tread, and sniffed the air portentously.
“He’s getting quite unmanageable! I’m thankful—yes, thankful that I have decided on that school in Brittany, and the sooner he goes the better!”
Meanwhile Boy was crying quietly, and by himself, in his room.
“Oh, Miss Letty!” he sobbed—“Dear Miss Letty! You wanted me to be your Boy! Oh, I wish I was!—I wish I was! Not for all the money—I don’t want any—but I want you! I want you, Miss Letty! Oh, I do want you so much! I do want you!”
Alas, the Fates, so often invincibly obstinate in their particular way of weaving the web of a life, and sometimes tangling the threads as they go, were apparently set dead against any change for the better occurring in this child’s destiny,—and no “occult” force of sound, or other form of spirit communication was vouchsafed to Miss Letty concerning the troubles and difficulties of her little friend. And the day came when Boy, to quote the ancient ballad of Lord Bateman,