"I believe you are right, boy. Let the world laugh if they please, and have done with it."
Harry began to walk up and down the room; he certainly did not look the kind of a man to give in; to try hiding things away. Quite the contrary. And he laughed—he took to laughing.
"I suppose it will sound comic at first," he said, "until people get used to it. Do you know what he turns out to be? That kind of thing: after all, we think too much about what people say—what does it matter what they say or how they say it? If they like to laugh, they can. Who shall be the town-crier?"
"I was thinking," said Lord Jocelyn slowly, "of calling to-day upon Lady Wimbledon."
The young man laughed, with a little heightening of his color.
"Of course—a very good person, an excellent person, and to-morrow it will be all over London. There are one or two things," he went on after a moment, "that I do not understand from the papers which you put into my hands last night."
"What are those things?" Lord Jocelyn for a moment looked uneasy.
"Well—perhaps it is impertinent to ask. But—when Mr. Bunker, the respectable Uncle Bunker, traded me away, what did he get for me?"
"Every bargain has two sides," said Lord Jocelyn. "You know what I got, you want to know what the honorable Bunker got. Harry, on that point I must refer you to the gentleman himself."
"Very good. Then I come to the next difficulty—a staggerer. What did you do it for? One moment, sir"—for Lord Jocelyn seemed about to reply. "One moment. You were rich, you were well born, you were young. What on earth made you pick a boy out of the gutter and bring him up like a gentleman?"