“A good-for-nothing vagabond he is!” said the very unprofessional magistrate.
“We rather hope,” said Dick, turning very red, “he’ll get let off.”
“Eh? what? Do you know, you young scamp, I can— So you want him let off, do you? How’s that?”
“Because he didn’t take the boat away,” said Dick, avoiding the horror-struck eyes of his “Firm.”
“We—that is I—let it go.”
“What do you say?” said the Squire, putting down his knife and fork and sitting back in his chair.
Whereupon Dick, as much to stave off the expected storm as to justify himself, proceeded to give a true, though agitated, story of his and Georgie’s adventures on the day of the Grandcourt match, appealing to Georgie at every stage in the narration to corroborate him. Which Georgie did, almost noisily.
The magistrate heard it all out in silence, with a face gradually becoming serious.
“Do you know what you can get for doing it?” he asked.
Dick’s face grew graver and graver.