‘Your boy, ma’am!’

Shine withdrew instantly, closing the door noiselessly after him, and left Dick flushed and furious.

‘He didn’t take me,’ he cried.  ‘I was comin’ home, an’ he grabbed me just outside there—­the beast!

Dick stopped short, suddenly conscious of the presence of visitors.  Mrs. Hardy was sitting opposite his mother by the wide fireplace—­the tall, white-haired gentlewoman in whose society he always felt himself transformed suddenly into a sort of saintly fellowship with the remarkably gentlemanly little boys whose acquaintance he made in the books provided by the chapel library.  At the table sat Gable, the grey, chubby-faced third-class scholar whom Joel Ham had forgiven because of his extreme youth.  The old man had a circular slab of bread and jam in his left hand, and was grinning fraternally at Dick.  There was a third visitor, a stranger, a brown-haired, brown-skinned, bony young man, dressed after the manner of a drover.  He had a small moustache, and a grave, taking face.  He looked like a bushranger, Dick thought admiringly.

‘This is Richard, Henry,’ said Mrs. Hardy.

‘You don’t know me, eh, Coppertop?’ said the young man, taking the boy’s hand.

‘Harry Hardy,’ said Dick at random.

’Well, that’s a good enough guess, young fellow

Dick fell back quietly.  It was, he felt, a moment when an air of sadness and a retiring disposition would be likely to be most becoming in him—­and most effective.  He declined his mother’s invitation to supper with such meekness that the little woman found it difficult to hide her concern.  Could she have peeped into the drive of the Mount of Gold, where was scrap-food enough to victual a small regiment, not to mention pillage from Wilson’s orchard, she might have been more at her ease—­or have found fresh occasion for uneasiness.  Dick had none of his mother’s apple-like roundness—­the widow, who was not yet thirty-five, always suggested apples and roses—­he had inherited his father’s flame-coloured hair, and a pale complexion that was very effective in turning away maternal wrath when allied with an appearance of pensive melancholy and a fictitious pain in the chest.

The conversation, which had been interrupted by Dick’s entrance, was presently resumed.  The women were recounting the story of Frank Hardy’s arrest and trial for Harry’s information.  The subject was one of profound interest to Dick, and from his retreat at the far end of the table, where he sat disregarded, his crimes tacitly ignored for the time being, he listened eagerly.  When Gable kicked him to attract his attention, and gleefully exhibited a handful of loaf sugar that he had slyly abstracted from the basin, the small boy frowned the old man down with a diabolical scowl.