“You’re an awful brick, Raby; but don’t bother about me. You’d all be ever so much more miserable if I came, and so should I.”
“But what good can it do?” pleaded his cousin.
“I don’t know—he might turn up. I might find him after all. If it hadn’t been for your father coming, Raby—I’d have begged you to stay too. He’d be more likely to come if he knew you were here.”
Raby flushed. Between Percy and his cousin there was no hypocrisy.
“Oh, Percy,” she said, “do you want to make me fifty times more miserable?” And she gave up further attempt to move him.
The travellers were away a month, during which time Percy kept his lonely vigil at Clarges Street. As the reader knows, it was useless. Jeffreys was never near the place, and the lad, watching day after day, began slowly to lose hope.
But that month’s experience was not wholly wasted. Memories of bygone talks with his friend, of good advice given, and quiet example unheeded at the time, crowded in on Percy’s memory now; adding to his sense of loss, certainly, but reminding him that there was something else to be done than mope and fret.
What would Jeffreys have had him do? he often asked himself; and the answer was plain and direct—work. That had always been Jeffreys’ cure for everything. That is what he would have done himself, and that is what Percy, chastened by his loss, made up his mind to now.
He got out his old books and his tools, and doggedly took up the work where he had left it. It was uphill, cheerless work, but he was better for it, and the memory of his lost friend became none the less dear for the relief it brought him.
Only one incident marked his solitary month at Clarges Street—that was a visit from Scarfe about a fortnight after the travellers had gone. Percy had a very shrewd guess, although he had never heard it in so many words, who was responsible for Jeffreys’ disgrace and dismissal; and that being so, it is not to be wondered at that his welcome of the visitor was not very cordial.