Meade L. T. - Girls New and Old стр 24.

"You can leave the profit out, young Ross."

"Well," said Maurice, "will you, or won't you? Will you make yourself beastly miserable for the sake of a brave girl? She can't help being a girl, but she can help being brave, and she is oh, you don't know how plucky she is. It puts me to shame the way she works, and the way she denies herself. Do you know what she's got in the back of her head? To send me to Oxford by and by, to make a man of me, and to provide a comfortable home for the other boys when they are older and need it more. I couldn't ask a woman to put herself out to give Cecil this chance, but I thought a man might, if he were worth the name."

"Upon my word, you're pretty frank, you British schoolboy," said Danvers; but his eyes danced again, and he ceased to cast loving glances in the direction of his bacon.

"Will you, or won't you?" said Maurice; "that's just it? You needn't deliberate you can say a frank 'yes' or 'no.' I don't pretend you'll like it of course you won't; but maybe Oh, I don't want to cant, but if there's anything in those words, 'It is more blessed '"

"I know 'em; you needn't finish them," interrupted Danvers. "It's 'yes' or 'no,' then. What a queer world this is! Here am I, bullied by one of the boys in my class, a young ruffian who murders his Homer, and nearly turns my brain over his Virgil; he comes and beards me in my own private den, with the most astounding, outrageous, unheard-of proposal and it's 'yes' or 'no' with the monkey. What will you do if I say 'no,' sir?"

"I'll be as I was before," answered Maurice; "but you won't, sir."

"I won't! Is that the way you take it?"

"No, sir; I see yielding in your face. I wouldn't have come to another master in the whole school."

"You needn't blarney me, Ross; blarney is the last straw. Now, you've stated the fact from your point of view. Allow me to tell you what this will mean to me. Lunacy, an asylum, in three months. Tell me to my face, is there a girl living who is worth that?"

"It won't be all that," said Maurice, with one of his slow smiles; "and Cecil is worth nearly that."

There was a look in Maurice's eyes just then, that made Danvers turn his head aside.

"Upon my word, there must be something in the girl," he said to himself. "What a lad this is, after all!"

Aloud he said, after a brief pause, "And suppose I agree?"

"Cecil will be perfectly happy and contented."

"But she doesn't know me, and I never laid eyes on her in my life."

"Oh, yes, you did! you must. She goes to church with us every Sunday."

"I never look at women when I can help it," said Danvers. "I keep my eyes on my book in church, and when your head master preaches, I shut them; no, I don't go to sleep, so you needn't wink, you dog! I can think better with my eyes shut."

"Well, at any rate," said Maurice, "Cecil knows about you; she knows we'd be safe with you."

Danvers uttered a deep groan.

"Oh, get out of this, Ross," he said; "don't let me see your face again until to-morrow at school, so out you go quick run get out of my presence! A pretty nut you've given me to crack."

CHAPTER VIII. MR. DANVERS ORDERS FURNITURE

"Stuffy," he muttered, sniffing as he spoke. "Let in plenty of air nothing like air. Now, then, for my supper. Digestion will be all wrong to-night. Oh, good Heavens! what

sin have I done, that this appalling dilemma should be presented to me? Won't think of it! Supper comes first, then all those themes. Never heard of a lad like Maurice Ross in all my life before won't think of him. That passage in Cæsar which I read this morning is worth pondering over; meant to go to sleep on it to-night will still. The cheek of that young beggar! won't think of him; I vow I won't! This bacon is destroyed; 'willful waste makes woeful want' That's what comes of listening to cheeky Won't revert to that dog."

John Danvers pushed up his red hair until it stood upright on his forehead. Then he sat plump down on the nearest chair, placed a thin hand on each knee, and gazed straight before him at all his books. He made an admirable scarecrow, sitting thus; and would have been the delight of every boy in his class, had they had the privilege of gazing at him. The bacon frizzled and burned on the pan, but he took no notice of it. Finally he put his supper away untasted, then lit his lamp, and sat down with thirty exercise books before him.

"As if this were not enough," he muttered. "For what sin am I so sorely punished? A girl wants to learn what she'd better not know, and I'm to go to Bedlam. If I were another man, I'd say 'no.' I always knew I was composite, and this proves it. I'm beastly weak; wish I weren't. Shouldn't think of it a second time, if I hadn't this abominable vein of good-nature running through me. That's the composite element which has destroyed my chance in life. For the sake of a girl Faugh! If it were a boy indeed! I take an interest in those torturing young beggars in spite of myself, and Maurice Ross is my favorite, and he knows it, the dog! Well, I'll sleep it over. Hang it, though, I don't believe I'll sleep a wink!"