And yet, they concluded, if the Martha had never gone adrift, no one would have known of Tom White’s fraud, and he might have been able to make money enough with her to clear himself.
It seemed unfair to rake up an old sore like this at the very beginning of the term, especially when, as they persuaded themselves, over and over again, the whole affair had very little to do with them.
“I vote we don’t look at this wretched paper any more,” said Heathcote, crumpling up the offending Observer into a ball, and giving it a punt across the path.
“Why not? We may as well see what becomes of Tom White,” said Dick. “Young Aspinall can fetch us up a copy once a week.”
And so one of the events of the new term was that the Templeton Observer had a new subscriber, and increased its circulation by two new and very diligent readers.
Chapter Seventeen.
The new Captain draws a straight line.
Mansfield returned to Templeton like a man who knows that his work is cut out for him, and who means to do it, coûte qui coûte, as the French say.