"Not a bit, Carrie. I expected he was going to be so, but he isn't the least like that. He is very much liked by everyone there. He doesn't say much, and he certainly looks stiff and grim enough for anything; but he isn't so, really, not a bit." "Didn't he scold you dreadfully about your upsetting those twelve bottles of wine?" "He never said a word about it, and I did not know at the time he had seen me. John, the foreman--the one who used to take me out in the holidays--would not have said anything about it. He said, of course accidents did happen, sometimes, with the boys; and when they did, he himself blew them up, and there was no occasion to mention it to Mr. Bale, when it wasn't anything very serious. But of course, I could not have that; and said that either he must tell uncle, or I should. "It really happened because my fingers were so cold I could not feel the bottle. Of course the cellar is not cold, but I had been outside, taking in a waggon load of bottles that had just arrived, and counting them, and my fingers got regularly numbed. "So John went to the counting house, and told him about the wine being spilt. He said I wished him to tell him, and how it had happened." "What did uncle say, Bob?" "He said he was glad to hear that I told John to tell him; but that he knew it already, for he had just come down to the cellar when the bottles went over and, as he didn't wish to interfere with the foreman's work, had come back to the counting house without anyone noticing he had been there. He said, of course boys could not be trusted like men; and that, as he had chosen to put me there, he must put up with accidents. He never spoke about it to me, till last night." "Well, he seemed very vexed about it, Bob, and made a great deal of it." "He didn't mean it, Carrie; and he knew I knew he didn't mean it. He knows I am beginning to understand him." That evening, Mr. Bale sent Bob back to the hotel by himself. "I thought I would get him out of the way," he said, when Bob had left. "I wanted to have a chat with you about him. "You see, Carrie, I acted hastily in taking him away from school; but it seemed to me that he must be getting into a very bad groove, to be playing such pranks as breaking out in the middle of the night. I was sorry, afterwards; partly because it had upset all my plans, partly because I was not sure that I had done the best thing by him. "I had intended that he should have stopped for another year, at school; by that time he would be between sixteen and seventeen, and I thought of taking him into the office for six months or so, to begin with, for him to learn a little of the routine. Then I had intended to send him out to Oporto, for two years, and then to Cadiz for two years; so that he would have learnt Portuguese and Spanish well, got up all there was to learn about the different growths, and established friendly relations with my agents.