“I have to say,” blurted out Jeremy, “that I don’t want your education. You care nothing about me,” he went on, his gray eyes flashing and his heavy face lighting up; “nobody cares about me except my dog Nails. Yes, you make a dog of me myself; you throw things to me as I throw Nails a bone. I don’t want your education, and I won’t have it. I don’t want the fine clothes you buy for me, and I won’t wear them. I don’t want to be a burden on you either. Let me go away and be a fisher-lad and earn my bread. If it hadn’t been for her,” pointing to his sister, who was sitting aghast at his outburst, “and for Nails, I’d have gone long ago, I can tell you. At any rate, I should not be a dog then. I should be earning my living, and have no one to thank for it. Let me go, I say, where I sha’n’t be mocked at if I do my fair day’s work. I’m strong enough; let me go. There! I’ve spoken my mind now;” and the lad broke out into a storm of tears, and, turning, tramped out of the room. As he went, all Mr. Cardus’s wrath seemed to leave him. “I did not think he had so much spirit in him,” he said aloud. “Well, let us have our dinner.” At dinner the conversation flagged, the scene that preceded it having presumably left a painful impression; and Ernest, who was an observant youth, fell to watching little Dorothy doing the honours of the table: cutting up her crazed old grandfather’s food for him, seeing that everybody had what they wanted, and generally making herself unobtrusively useful. In due course the meal came to an end, and Mr. Cardus and old Atterleigh went back to the office, leaving Dorothy alone with Ernest. Presently the former began to talk. “I hope that your eye is not painful,” she said. “Jeremy hits very hard.” “O no, it’s all right. I’m used to it. When I was at school in London I often used to fight. I’m sorry for him, though—your brother, I mean.” “Jeremy! O yes, he is always in trouble, and now I suppose that it will be worse than ever. I do all I can to keep things smooth, but it is no good. If he won’t go to Mr. Halford’s, I am sure I don’t know what will happen;” and the little lady sighed deeply. “O, I daresay that he will go. Let’s go and look for him, and try and persuade him.” “We might try,” she said, doubtfully. “Stop a minute, and I will put on my hat, and then if you will take that nasty thing off your eye, we might walk on to Kesterwick. I want to take a book, out of which I have been teaching myself French, back to the cottage where old Miss Ceswick lives, you know.” “All right,” said Ernest. Presently Dorothy returned, and they went out by the back way to a little room near the coach-house, where Jeremy stuffed birds and kept his collection of eggs and butterflies; but he was not there. On inquiring of Sampson, the old Scotch gardener who looked after Mr. Cardus’s orchid-houses, she discovered that Jeremy had gone out to shoot snipe, having borrowed Sampson’s gun for that purpose.