“Since which time,” added the Superintendent, “his conduct has been most exemplary.”
“Thank you, sir,” burst out the lad.
“And this is the lad,” argued the carpenter, “that you’re going to spend more of the ratepayers’ money on. This is the lad that’s cost us a matter of thirty pound a year for the last four years, and now we’re going to send him off to a training ship, where he’ll cost us a matter of thirty-two pound a year. Is that so, or is it not so?”
“It is so,” said the chairman.
“It’s enough,” declared the retired carpenter, gloomily, “to make a man give up public life altogether. What was he when we begun to have to do with him? Answer me, somebody.”
The Superintendent asked if the information was really necessary.
“Pardon me, sir,” said Robert Lancaster, from the other side of the table. “I can give the information what’s required. I was left without parents, I was, and I become the ’sociate of bad characters. My coming down ’ere put me on the straight, and I tell you I ain’t particular anxious to get off of it.”
“My lad!” said the jovial chairman, “we’ll see that you don’t. You’ll have a couple of years on the training ship, and when you leave there I hope you’ll make up your mind to be a credit to your parish, to your country, and your Queen.”
“Hooray!” said Robert Lancaster, softly.
“And we shall look to you to see that all this money which has been spent on you is not wasted. We shall expect you to become a good citizen, one who will help in some small way to improve the estimate in which his great country is held.”