“Rather cool cheek of you, Coote,” said Dick, as the “Firm” returned to the school, “cadging my father that way for breakfast.”
“Very sorry,” said Coote, humbly. “I thought we were all in it, that’s all.”
The evening passed anxiously for the boys, and no less so for poor Mr Richardson, who was buffeted about from pillar to post, from lawyer to lawyer, from boatman to pawnbroker, in his honest efforts to extricate his son from his scrape.
The recovery of the Martha, he found, made very little improvement in his prospects. For now she had come back, everybody seemed to be calculating the amount of money she would have brought in had she remained at Templeton during the busy season. This loss was estimated at several times the value of the boat, and the high-principled prosecutors would hear no suggestion of withdrawing the case until each one of them—partners, pawnbroker, and all—had been refunded the entire sum.
Then, when that was done, the lawyers pulled their bills out of their desks, and hinted that some one would have to settle them; and as neither the partners, nor the pawnbroker, nor Tom White, saw their way to doing so, Mr Richardson had to draw his own inferences and settle them himself. Then, when all seemed settled, the police recollected that they had had considerable trouble in looking after the case. They had made several journeys, and spent several hours on the beach looking out for the supposed thief. They had also had charge of Tom White for a fortnight; and what with postages, telegrams, and office fees, they were decidedly out of pocket over the whole business.
The long-suffering father put them in pocket, and after subscribing to several local charities, and consoling the reporters of the Templeton Observer and other such outsiders, he retired, jaded, but comforted, to the “George,” feeling that if his mission had been successful, it had cost him an amount of generosity which he could hardly have believed was in him.
When Dick, “with shining morning face,” presented himself next morning for breakfast, he little imagined how much of his father’s money was at that moment scattered about in Templeton.
“Huzza! father,” said he, when his parent presented himself in the coffee-room. “Such a game! Cresswell says he’ll give us his study this evening, so our ‘Firm’s’ going to give you a spread. Coote and Georgie are out ordering the tucker now—kidneys and tea-cake. I asked Winter when I went for my exeat if we might have you, and he said, ‘Yes; he’d be very glad.’ Mind you come. It’ll be a stunning spread, and Georgie and Coote are sure to pick out good things. I wish mother could come too.”
In the face of this hospitable outburst, Mr Richardson could hardly expatiate on the cost and anxiety of his mission to Templeton. A calmer moment must do for that. Meanwhile he delighted his son’s heart by accepting his invitation on the spot.
He allowed Dick and his two friends, if it fitted in with school rules, to be present in the Court to hear the end of Tom White’s case—a permission they were not slow to avail themselves of, although this time they occupied a modest seat at the back, and attempted no public manifestations of encouragement to the prisoner in court.