‘Oh, John!’ cried Susie, with tears in her eyes; ‘when I told you it was for family reasons, for property and that sort of thing! Why will you be so perverse? Do you think it is a nice thing, do you think it looks honest and true, to have two names?’
‘Perhaps not,’ said the lad, ‘but then, let me have my own that was mine when I was a little child. Your family reasons, Susie, they were never told to me.’
‘Then for mere pride you will make an end of all mother has done and tried to do all her life, because she couldn’t explain to you, a little boy that couldn’t understand; you’ll expose her to all sorts of trouble, and yourself—yourself to——’
The tears were in Susie’s eyes. Her countenance, so gentle and mild, was suffused with angry colour, with indignation and impatience.
‘Even that man,’ she said, ‘even that man, a stranger, could—— Oh, John, will you go against grandfather as well as the rest of us? He left you the most of what he had, and his own good name, John Sandford, because he had no son. Will you go against grandfather and grandmother too?’
‘No,’ said John, after a pause, ‘I never did, and I never will. I suppose they wished it, though they never said anything. But, Susie, I’m no longer a child. All those circumstances you speak of, that you have known for years and years, surely may be told to me too?’
She shuddered a little and turned her face away.
‘I’ll speak to mother,’ she said, in a subdued voice. Then, more boldly, ‘But if you’re to be John Sandford, as grandfather said, you can’t be—the other. Is it right to have two names? It is just the one thing that cannot be done. It looks as if one were dishonest, untrue, to hide one’s name——’
‘I have no reason to do that,’ said John. ‘If you are sure grandfather intended it to be so? He never said anything to me. I always took it for granted without inquiring. I had forgotten the other. As for Mr. Montressor,’ said John, ‘I did it without thought. I had been thinking over it a great deal on the way to London, and when I saw him it was the first thing that came into my head.’