Chapter Thirty One.
How I made a still more Important Discovery.
A few evenings after the awkward discovery recorded in the last chapter Mr Hawkesbury himself called at our lodgings. He looked troubled and constrained, but as kind as usual.
He came to tell us how sorry he was to have been deprived of our company that evening, and to offer a sort of apology for his son’s conduct.
“I fear from what he tells me that you do not all get on very happily together at the office. I am so sorry, for I would have liked you all to be friends.”
It was hardly possible to tell the father frankly what we thought of his son, so I replied, vaguely, “No, we don’t get on very well, I’m sorry to say.”
“The fact is,” said Jack, “we never have been friends.”
“He told me so, greatly to my sorrow.”