mingled
with his ideas of possession.

"I listened, and I told of him," he said. "I couldn't help listening,
but I went and told; and I don't like being here, and his money, and he
not knowing what I did. Haven't you heard? I'm certain I know what you
think, and so do I, and I must take my luck. I'm always in mischief,
getting into a mess or getting out of it. I don't mind, I really don't,
Miss Middleton, I can sleep in a tree quite comfortably. If you're not
going to be here, I'd just as soon be anywhere. I must try to earn my
living some day. And why not a cabin-boy? Sir Cloudesley Shovel was no
better. And I don't mind his being wrecked at last, if you're drowned
an admiral. So I shall go and ask him to take his money back, and if he
asks me I shall tell him, and there. You know what it is: I guessed
that from what Dr. Corney said. I'm sure I know you're thinking what's
manly. Fancy me keeping his money, and you not marrying him! I wouldn't
mind driving a plough. I shouldn't make a bad gamekeeper. Of course I
love boats best, but you can't have everything."

"Speak to Mr. Whitford first," said Clara, too proud of the boy for
growing as she had trained him, to advise a course of conduct opposed
to his notions of manliness, though now that her battle was over she
would gladly have acquiesced in little casuistic compromises for the
sake of the general peace.

Some time later Vernon and Dr. Corney were arguing upon the question.
Corney was dead against the sentimental view of the morality of the
case propounded by Vernon as coming from Miss Middleton and partly
shared by him. "If it's on the boy's mind," Vernon said, "I can't
prohibit his going to Willoughby and making a clean breast of it,
especially as it involves me, and sooner or later I should have to tell
him myself."

Dr. Corney said no at all points. "Now hear me," he said, finally.
"This is between ourselves, and no breach of confidence, which I'd not
be guilty of for forty friends, though I'd give my hand from the
wrist-joint for one--my left, that's to say. Sir Willoughby puts me one
or two searching interrogations on a point of interest to him, his
house and name. Very well, and good night to that, and I wish Miss Dale
had been ten years younger, or had passed the ten with no heartrisings
and sinkings wearing to the tissues of the frame and the moral fibre to
boot. She'll have a fairish health, with a little occasional doctoring;
taking her rank and wea