“Person!” interrupted the boy. “Jeff’s not a person; he’s a gentleman. As good as any of us, only he hasn’t got so much money.”
“I fear, Percy, your illness has not improved your good manners. I wish to say that Mr Jeffreys may have done you service—”
“I should think he has,” interrupted the irrepressible one.
“But it by no means follows that he is a proper companion for a good innocent boy like you.”
Percy laughed hilariously.
“Really, ma, you are coming it strong. Do you see my blushes, Raby?”
“You must make up your mind to see a great deal less of Mr Jeffreys for the future; he is not the sort of person—”
“Look here, ma,” said Percy, terrifying his parent by the energy with which he sprang to his feet. “I’m jolly ill, and you’d be awfully sorry if I had a fit of coughing and brought up blood, wouldn’t you? Well, I shall if you call Jeff a person again. Where is Jeff, I say? I want Jeff. Why don’t you tell him, Raby?”
After this, for a season at any rate, Percy was allowed to have his own way, and jeopardised his moral welfare by unrestricted intercourse with the “person” Jeffreys.
They spent their time not wholly unprofitably. For, besides a good deal of reading of history and classics (for which Percy was rapidly developing a considerable taste), and a good deal of discussion on all sorts of topics, they were deep in constructing the model of a new kind of bookcase, designed by Percy, with some ingenious contrivances for keeping out dust and for marking, by means of automatic signals, the place of any book which should be taken from its shelf. This wonderful work of art promised to eclipse every bookcase ever invented. The only drawback to it was that it was too good. Percy insisted on introducing into it every “dodge” of which he was capable, and the poor model more than once threatened to collapse under the burden of its own ingenuity. However, they stuck to it, and by dint of sacrificing a “dodge” here and a “dodge” there, they succeeded in producing a highly curious and not unworthy model, which Percy was most urgent that his father should forthwith adopt for his library, all the existing bookcases being sacrificed for firewood to make way for the new ones.