“No, ’twouldn’t be safe for you, I presume,” sneered Ralph. “He’s awfully afraid of his governor, lads; so we’d best not try to persuade him.”
“Do you mean my father?” demanded Max, a trifle hotly.
“Of course, my little man; whom else should I mean?”
“Then I want you to understand that I never would be so disrespectful to my father as to call him that!”
“It’s not so bad,” laughed Chester, while Bertram frowned and muttered something about a “Muff and a spooney,” and Frank said, “Come now, Max, sit down and have a game with us. Where’s the harm?”
“Don’t urge him,” sneered Ralph, “he’s afraid of a flogging. He knows he’d catch it, and the captain looks like a man that wouldn’t mince matters if he undertook to administer it.”
Max’s face flushed more hotly than before, but he straightened himself and looked his tormentor full in the eye as he answered: “I don’t deny that I should expect a flogging if I should weakly yield and do what my conscience tells me is wrong, even if my father had not forbidden it, as he has; but I’m not ashamed to own that I love my father so well that the pained look I should see in his face when he learned that his only son had taken to such wicked courses, would be worse to me than a dozen floggings. Good-night to you all,” and he turned and left the room.
“Coward!” muttered Ralph, as the door closed on him.
“Any thing else than that, I should say,” remarked Chester. “I think he has just shown himself the bravest of us all. Moral courage, we all know, is courage of the highest kind.”
“Yes, boys, I am sure he’s in the right, and I, for one, shall follow his example,” said Arthur, rising; and with a hasty good-night, he too disappeared.