"You don't think, Master Ferdy—" he was beginning, when the door opened and both Mr. and Mrs. Ross came in.
"Ferdy, darling," exclaimed his mother, "you've not been really frightened, I hope—" but she stopped short, startled by an exclamation from her husband.
"Jesse!" he said. "You here after all! Upon my word!" And for a moment he looked as if he were really angry. Then the absurd side of the matter struck him, and it was with some difficulty that he suppressed a smile.
"My dear boy," he went on, glancing at the tiny, but determined-looking figure on the couch, "you'll be having your poor old father pulled up for conniving at felony."
"I don't know what that is, papa," said Ferdy. "But if it means hiding Jesse under the sofa—yes, I did do it, and I'd do it again. It wasn't Jesse thought of it, only he was afraid that if Brownrigg took him away he'd be put in prison and have nobody to speak up for him, and perhaps have been kept there for ever and ever so long."
"Your opinion of the law of the land is not a very high one apparently, Jesse," said Mr. Ross, eying the boy gravely.
Jesse shuffled and grew very red.
"I'll do whatever you think right, sir," he said stoutly. "If I must give myself up to Brownrigg, I'll run after him now. I don't want to get Master Ferdy nor you into any bother about me, after—after all you've done for me," and for the first time the boy broke down, turning his face away to hide the tears which he tried to rub off with the cuff of his sleeve.
"Oh, papa," said Ferdy pleadingly, his own eyes growing suspiciously dewy, "mamma, mamma, look at him."