“No, I do not know where he is hiding,” said the master of the N. D. Farm in answer to a question. “I wish I did know: I would hang him with all the pleasure in life. An ungrateful, reckless—— What’s that, Squire? You’d recommend me to increase the reward? Why, I have increased it. I have doubled it. Old Jones has my orders to post up fresh bills.”
“If all’s true that’s reported, he can’t escape very far; he had no money in his pocket,” put in young Mr. Stirling, of the Court, who sometimes came over to our church. “By the way, who has been playing to-day?”
“Johnny Ludlow.”
“Oh, have you, Johnny?” he said, turning to me. “It was very pleasant. And so was the singing.”
“It would have been better had Mrs. Todhetley played—as she was to have done,” I said, wishing they wouldn’t bring me up before people, and knowing that my playing was just as simple as it could be, neither florid nor flowery.
“I have seen what Frederick Westerbrook was, this many a year past,” broke in Mrs. Westerbrook in loud tones, as if resenting the drifting of the conversation from Fred’s ill-doings. “Mr. Westerbrook knows that I have given him my opinion again and again. Only he would not listen.”
“How could I believe that my own brother’s son was the scamp you and Gisby made him out to be?” testily demanded old Westerbrook, who in his way was just as unsophisticated and straightforward as the Squire: and would have been as good-natured, let alone. “I’m sure till the last year or two Fred was as steady and dutiful as heart could wish.”
“You had better say he is still,” said she.
“But—hang it!—I don’t say it, ma’am,” fired old Westerbrook. “I should be a fool to say it. Unfortunately, I can’t say it. I have lived to find he is everything that’s bad—and I say that hanging’s too good for him.”