"There—there—there—" cried Mr. Blight, patting her clumsily on the back. Had she been a full-grown woman, he could hardly have been more embarrassed, yet he was pleased that she clung to him thus, for he was smiling. "I'll not give you any advantages you don't want—I promise you. I just wish to make you happy. What's the use of my working all my life, piling up money, capturing the steel trade, adding mills and mills to my plants, if I have no one to look after. There—there—there—now, child, don't cry. Won't you come with your poor, lonely, old uncle?"
Even to my prejudiced mind, he was playing his part well, for this awkward kindness touched Penelope at last. She did not reply, nor did she demur, but she clung closer to him in silence. I saw my danger and hers, and ran to him and grasped his knees.
"Oh, Mr. Blight, don't take her away!" I cried. "I promised the
Professor I'd look after her. I promised——"
"Dav-id!" exclaimed my father, and he grasped my arm and began to draw me away.
My fear of him even could not restrain me, and I resisted, digging my fingers into the knees, clutching the folds of the trousers where Mr. Blight had so carefully arranged them to prevent them bagging. He intervened, as much, I think, to save his immaculate clothes as me from being torn asunder.
"Dav-id!" cried my father.
"Mr. Blight—Mr. Blight—don't take her away!" I pleaded.
Mr. Blight began to laugh. "Judge—Judge—release him," he said, and freeing me from the paternal grasp, he drew me toward him. When he had ironed out the wrinkled knees with his hand, he patted me on the head. "You are a good boy, David," he went on, "and I understand exactly how you feel. What you have done for Penelope will never be forgotten, will it, my little girl?" The emphasis on the last phrase of possession extinguished the spark of hope in me, and had he stopped there I should have surrendered feebly, but turning to my father, he added: "You have a fine boy, Judge, and I like him. When I get home I shall send him a gun. What kind of a gun do you want, David?"
Young as I was then, I had not yet learned to value the good things of life in terms of dollars, and to the power of the dollar my eyes were just being opened. This man wielded it. He was enticing Penelope behind the barrier of his fat, oily prosperity where I could not reach her. Holding her there, he was magnanimously compensating me with a gun, as though we were making a trade in which the profit were mine, as though he were valuing her in money. My dislike, born of the Professor's contemptuous reference to him, had turned to distrust and aversion as I watched him weaving his toils about Penelope. Now I hated him and drew back from him as though his touch were baneful; I stamped a foot and shook a fist and shouted: "I don't want your old gun; Penelope doesn't want your money. You have no right——"
My father's arms were about me. He lifted me from my feet and carried me to the door, and as I struggled blindly to free myself and return to the attack I looked back at Rufus Blight. It was not to see him sinking under the shame of my anathema. Signs of anger in him would have incensed me far less than his lofty unconcern. He even interceded for me, but this only proved how secure was his victory, and that to his view what fell to me was of little moment.