y after his engagement, had as delicately as
possible offered him a quarter's salary in advance, which Jeffreys,
guessing the source which inspired the offer, had flatly refused. Mr
Rimbolt's gentlemanly urging, however, and the consciousness that his
present clothes were disreputable, as well as another consideration,
induced him to accept a month's stipend; and on the strength of this he
had visited the Overstone tailor.
But before doing so he had discharged his mind of a still more important
duty. The sense of the debt still due to Bolsover had hung round his
neck night and day. It was not so much on Mr Frampton's account. He
came gradually to hate the thought of Bolsover, and the idea of being a
defaulter to the place worried him beyond measure. It seemed like an
insult to the memory of poor young Forrester to owe money to the place
which had witnessed that terrible tragedy; and the hope of washing his
hands once for all of the school and its associations was the one faint
gleam of comfort he had in looking back on the events of last year. It
was therefore with a feeling of almost fierce relief that he procured a
post-office order for the balance of his debt on the very afternoon of
receiving the money, and enclosing it with merely his name added--for he
wanted no receipt, and felt that even Mr Frampton's letters would now
no longer be of service to him--he posted it with his own hands, and
hoped that he was done with Bolsover for ever. After that, with very
different emotions, he visited the tailor.
The clothes arrived on the same afternoon which had witnessed the
summary rejection of Mrs Rimbolt's gift. That lady, from whom Walker
had considered it prudent to keep back some of the particulars of his
interview with the librarian, merely reporting "that Mr Jeffreys was
much obliged, but did not require the things," took to herself all the
credit of his improved appearance when that evening Mr Rimbolt brought
him in from the library to have coffee in the drawing-room.
Jeffreys, aware that he was undergoing inspection, felt very shy and
awkward, but could not quite do away with the improvement, or conceal
that, despite his ugly face and ungainly figure there was something of
the gentleman about him.
Mrs Rimbolt by no means approved of her husband bringing his librarian
into the drawing-room. She considered it a slight to herself and
dangerous to Percy and Raby to have this person added to their family
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