“Ah!” replied the tutor, chirruping encouragement to the horses.
“Roger Ingleton’s life twenty years ago was a life to make an insurance company cheerful,” said the doctor.
“What changed it?”
“He had a scape-grace son. They fell out—there was a furious quarrel—and one day the father and son—ugh!—fought, with clenched fists, sir, like two—two costermongers!—and the boy did not get the best of it. He left home, and no wonder, and was never heard of since. Faugh! it was a sickening business.”
“That explains what he was saying this afternoon about a son he had once. He was telling me about it when he was struck.”
“Ay! that blow has been owing him for twenty years. It is the last round of the fight, Armstrong. But,” continued he, “this is all a secret. No one knows it at Maxfield. I doubt if your pupil so much as imagines he ever had a brother.”
“He has never mentioned it to me,” said the tutor.
“No need that he should know,” said the doctor. “Let the dead bury his dead.”
“Is he dead, then?”
“Before the Squire married again,” said the doctor, “the poor boy went straight to the dogs, and they made an end of him. There! let’s talk of something else. I don’t know why I tell you what has never passed my lips for twenty years.”