“Well?” said Stephen, in the midst of undressing, as his brother entered the dormitory.
“He wasn’t there. I’ll see him in the morning,” said Oliver. “Good-night, Stee.”
“Good-night, Noll, old man! I say, you are a brick to me!” and as the boy spoke there was a tremble in his voice which went straight to his brother’s heart.
“You are a brick to me!” A pretty “brick” he had been, letting the youngster drift anywhere—into bad company, into bad ways, without holding out a hand to warn him; and in the end coming to his help only by accident, and serving him by undertaking a task which would quite possibly result in his expulsion from the school.
A brick, indeed! Oliver went off to his own bed that night more dispirited and dissatisfied with himself than he had ever felt before. And all through his dreams his brother’s troubled face looked up at him, and the trembling voice repeated, again and again, “You are a brick to me—a brick to me!”
Chapter Twenty Two.
The Nightingale Examination.
The next morning early, before breakfast, Oliver joined the Doctor in his study, and made a clean breast to him there and then of Stephen’s delinquencies. He had evidently taken the right step in doing so, for, hearing it all thus frankly confessed by the elder brother, Dr Senior was disposed to take a much more lenient view of the case than he would had the information come to him through any other channel.