It was a woeful check. I set on and begged as if I had been begging for life: saying I hardly knew what. That it might save Tod from a downhill course—and spare grief to the poor old Squire—and pain to me. Pain that would lie on my mind always, knowing that I possessed the money, yet might not use it to save him.
“It’s of no use, Johnny. I have been a faithful guardian to you, and done well by your property. Could your dead father look back on this world and see the income you’ll come into when you are of age, he would know I speak the truth. You cannot suppose I should waste any portion of it, I don’t care how slight a one, in paying young men’s wicked gambling debts.”
I prayed him still. I asked him to put himself in my place and see if he would not feel as I felt. I said that I should never—as I truly believed—have an opportunity of spending money that would give me half the pleasure of this, or do half the good. Besides, it was only a loan: Tod was sure to repay it when he could. No: old Brandon was hard as flint. He got up and rang the bell.
“We’ll drop it, Johnny. What will you take? Have you had anything since breakfast?”
“No, sir. But I don’t want anything.”
“Bring up dinner for this young gentleman,” he said, when the waiter appeared. “Anything you have that’s good. And be quick about it, please.”
They brought up a hastily prepared dinner: and very good it was. But I could scarcely eat for sorrow. Old Brandon, nursing himself at the opposite end of the table, the yellow handkerchief on his head, looked at me all the while.
“Johnny Ludlow, do you know what I think—that you’d give away your head if it were loose. It’s a good thing you have me to take care of you.”
“No, sir, I should not. If you would let me have this hundred pounds—it is really only ninety-two, though—I would repay it with two hundred when I came of age.”
“Like the simpleton you are.”