Meanwhile our host chatted pleasantly, chiefly about his parish and his plans for improving it. I could not help admiring him more and more as he went on. He was not, to all appearance, a very clever man, but there was an honest ring about all he said which made me feel that, had I only known him in the months past I might have been spared many of my follies and troubles.

At last there was a step in the hall outside, and the door opened. What was our amazement and consternation when we beheld in Edward, the good clergyman's son--Hawkesbury!

Our consternation, however, hardly exceeded his, on seeing who his father's visitors were. And as for the clergyman himself, the sight of our mutual astonishment fairly took him aback.

It was half a minute at least before any one could sufficiently recover his surprise to speak. During the interval my great fear was how Smith would act. I knew he detested Hawkesbury, and believed him to be a hypocrite and a deceiver, and I knew too that he was rarely able to contain himself when face to face with the fellow. How he would behave now, a guest in the father's house, I could not imagine. Fool that I was! I was always doubting my friend!

"Why, how is this," said Mr Hawkesbury, "you seem to know one another?"

"Yes," said I, "Hawkesbury here is at Merrett, Barnacle, and Company's with Smith and me."

"How very curious!" said the clergyman; "and, to be sure, I neither knew your names, nor you mine. Well, as you all know one another, I needn't introduce you."

"Father," said Hawkesbury, standing still at the door, "I want to speak to you a moment, please."

"Yes, presently; but come in now, Edward, we are waiting to begin supper. Now, what an odd coincidence to come across you in this way!"

"I want to speak to you, father," again said Hawkesbury.

The father looked vexed as he turned towards his son.

Smith rose at the same moment and said, holding out his hand to Mr Hawkesbury, "I think, if you will excuse us, we had better go, sir."

"What, before supper! why, how is this?"

"I think your son would rather not have us here," said Jack, solemnly.

The father looked in amazement, first at us, then at his son, who once more asked to speak to his father.

The good man, in evident bewilderment, begged us to excuse him for a moment. But Jack, taking my arm once more, said, before our host could leave the room, "Good-night, sir. Thank you very much for your kindness."

And before I well knew where I was, we were standing out in the street.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

HOW I MADE A STILL MORE IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.

A few evenings after the awkward discovery recorded in the last chapter Mr Hawkesbury himself called at our lodgings. He looked troubled and constrained, but as kind as usual.

He came to tell us how sorry he was to have been deprived of our company that evening, and to offer a sort of apology for his son's conduct.

"I fear from what he tells me that you do not all get on very happily together at the office. I am so sorry, for I would have liked you all to be friends."

It was hardly possible to tell the father frankly what we thought of his son, so I replied, vaguely, "No, we don't get on very well, I'm sorry to say."

"The fact is," said Jack, "we never have been friends."

"He told me so, greatly to my sorrow."

"I suppose he also told you why?" asked Jack, glancing sharply at the clergyman.

The latter looked disturbed and a trifle confused as he replied, "Yes, he did tell me something which--"

"He told you I was a convict's son," said Jack, quietly.

"What!" exclaimed the clergyman, with an involuntary start--"what! No, he didn't tell me that, my poor boy: he never told me that!"

"I am," quietly said Jack.

I was amazed at the composure with which he said it, and looked the visitor in the face as he did so.

The face was full of pity and sympathy. Not a shade of horror crossed it, and for all he was Hawkesbury's father, I liked him more than ever.

"Do you mind telling me what he did say about me?" asked Jack, presently.

"We will not talk about that," said the clergyman.

Jack looked disposed for a moment to persevere in his demand, but the father's troubled face disarmed him.

"Poor Edward has had great disadvantages," he began, in a half- apologetic, half-melancholy way, "and I often fear I am to blame. I have thought too much of my work out of doors, and too little of my duty to him. I have not been to him all that a father should be."

He said this more in the way of talking to himself than of addressing us. But I saw Jack colour up at the last reference, and hastened to change the subject.

We felt quite sorry for him when he rose to go. He evidently knew his son's failings only too well, and with a father's love tried to cover them. And I could see how in all he said he was almost pleading with us to befriend his boy.

To me it was more than painful to hear him talk thus--to speak to me as if I was a paragon of virtue, and to apologise to _me_ for the defects of his own son. It was more than I could endure; and when he started to go I asked if I might walk with him.

He gladly a.s.sented, and then I poured into his ears the whole story of my follies and struggles and troubles in London.

I shall never forget the kind way in which he listened and the still kinder way in which he talked when he had heard all.

I am not going to repeat that talk here; the reader may guess for himself what a simple Christian minister would have to say to one in my case, and how he would say it. He neither preached nor lectured, and he broke out into no exclamations. Had he done so, I should probably have been flurried and frightened away. But he talked to me as a father to his son--or rather as a big brother to a young one--entering into all my troubles and difficulties, and even claiming a share in them himself.

It was a long time since I had had such a talk with any one, and it did me good.

An uneventful week or two followed. We occasionally saw Mr Hawkesbury at our lodgings, for Smith could never bring himself to the point of again visiting the rectory. Indeed, he was now so busily engaged in the evenings preparing for his coming examination that he had time for nothing, and even the education of the lively Billy temporarily devolved on me.

It was not till after a regular battle royal that that young gentleman could be brought to submit to be "larned" by any one but his own special "bloke," and even when he did yield, under threats of actual expulsion from the school, he made such a point of comparing everything I did and said with the far superior manner in which Smith did and said it, that for a time it was rather uphill work. At length, however, he quieted down, and displayed no small apt.i.tude for instruction, which was decidedly encouraging.

At the office Hawkesbury, ever since the uncomfortable meeting at his father's, had been very constrained in his manner to Jack and me, attempting no longer to force his society on us, and, indeed, relapsing into an almost mysterious reserve, which surprised more of those who knew him than our two selves.

As Doubleday said--who had never quite got over his sense of injury--"he had shut himself up with his petty-cash, and left us to get on the best we could without him."

Smith and I would both, for his father's sake, have liked if possible to befriend him or do him a good turn. But he seemed studiously to avoid giving us the opportunity, and was now as distant to us as we had once been to him.

However, in other respects our life at Hawk Street proceeded pleasantly enough, not the least pleasant thing being a further rise in both our salaries, an event which enabled me to set aside so much more every week to repay Flanagan his generous loan, as well as to clear myself finally of debt.