“I wish you would please to let me alone,” said he patiently. “My father would not have placed me here had he known.”
“Why don’t you write and tell him, Bristles?”
“I would not like to grieve him,” simply answered Charley. “I can bear. And he does so much want me to learn good English.”
“This cross is gold, I suppose?” said Bill Whitney, who now had it.
“Yes, it is gold,” answered Van Rheyn.
“I wouldn’t advise you to fall amongst thieves, then. They might ease you of it. The carving must be worth something.”
“It cost a great deal to buy, I have heard my aunt say. Will you be so good as to give it me, that I may finish to dress myself?”
Whitney handed him the cross. Time was up, in fact; and we had to make a race for the house. Van Rheyn was catching it hot and sharp, all the way.
One might have thought that his very meekness, the unresisting spirit in which he took things, would have disarmed the mockery. But it did not. Once go in wholesale for putting upon some particular fellow in a school, and the tyranny gains with use. I don’t think any of them meant to be really unkind to Van Rheyn; but the play had begun, and they enjoyed it.