“Besides, a fellow may sometimes do what’s right and not be an utter cad. Perhaps you don’t think so, though. You’d cut a nobler figure, wouldn’t you, dragging down your chums from one row to another, than by anything so paltry as doing right because it is right? I quite understand that feeling.”
“Why do you talk to me like that?” said Dick, feeling a sting in every word of the senior’s speech. “You think I went to the levée to please myself. I didn’t.”
“And is that why you are sorry you went? Don’t make yourself out worse than you are, Dick. You’ve done a plucky thing for once in a way, and got yourself into a row with the Den, and I really don’t see that you have very much to reproach yourself with.”
“I don’t care a farthing for the Den,” said Dick.
“But you do for yourself. If I were you, I wouldn’t let myself be floored by one reverse. Stick to your man, and you’ll get him out of the hands of the Philistines after all.”
This little talk did Dick good, and cleared his mind. It put things in a new light. It recalled the Ghost’s letter, and brought up in array once more the better resolutions that appeal had awakened. What was the use of his setting up as an example to his friends, when he was little better than a rowdy himself? Yes; Dick Richardson must be looked to. How, and by whom?
“Dominat qui in se dominatur,” said Dick to himself, as he went off to bed, and closed a very uncomfortable and critical day.
When he went to call Cresswell next morning he found him already up and dressed.
“Ah, youngster, before you to-day! Have you forgotten it’s a holiday?”
“So it is,” said Dick, who, in his troubles, had actually overlooked the fact.