“Hush, I tell you. Be quiet. What good can it do you to let everybody know?”
“It’s right, Mr. Walter, as your father should know.”
“Not if I satisfy you,” said the boy. “Come in here. They are all at breakfast. Quick. Whatever it is, I am the person—”
Walter’s voice broke off short, and his under-lip dropped with a shock of sudden horror. His father’s hand, preventing the closing of it, was laid upon the book-room door.
“If it is anything that concerns you, Wat, it must concern me too,” Sir Edward said. He did not even now think any more of Walter’s possibilities of ill-doing than of Horry’s. They were still on about the same level to the father’s eyes. He supposed it was some innocent piece of mischief, some practical joke, or, at the worst, some piece of boyish negligence, of which Crockford had come to complain. He followed the two into the room with the suspicion of a smile at the corners of his mouth. He did not quite understand of what mischief his son might have been guilty, but there could be nothing very serious in the matter when old Crockford was the complainant.
“Well,” he said, “old friend, what has my boy done?”
But the sight of Sir Edward and this smiling accost seemed to take the power of speech from Crockford, as well as from Walter. The old man opened his mouth and his eyes; the color faded as far as that was possible out of the streaky and broken red of his cheeks. He began to hook his fingers together, changing them from one twist to another as he turned his face from the father to the son. It was evident that, notwithstanding his half threat to Walter, the presence of Walter’s father was as bewildering to him as to the young man.
“Well, sir,” he said, instinctively putting up his hand to his head and disordering the scanty white locks which were drawn over his bald crown, “I’m one as is lookin’ ahead, so being as I’m an old man, and has a deal of time to think; my occypation’s in the open air, and things goes through of my head that mightn’t go through of another man’s.”
“That is all very well,” said Sir Edward, still with his half smile. “I have heard you say as much a great many times, Crockford, but it generally was followed by something less abstract. What has your occupation and your habit of thought to say to my boy?”
Upon this Crockford scratched his head more and more.