and I
don't want your pardon. I've had two years to think this over in. I've
been without my lad all the time, and I've come out here to find him
broke and wandering in his mind. I've sat down between your bed and
his, and I've heard him in his wanderings say how he hated you, and I've
heard you say how you've hated him. And now I tell you, fair and square,
find a way of hitting me that won't hit the lad, and I'll take anything
that you can do to me.'

'There isn't any way,' said De Blacquaire, 'worse luck! I'm told that
there's a doctrine of heredity, and we've got to believe that men are
like their fathers. Personally, I'm not going to believe it And I shall
be obliged to you if you will go and send back a lad who's about as much
like you as you're like the Apostle Paul. Now--vanish! and behave like
an honest fellow for once in your life for the sake of an honest son.'

John Jervase rose. 'It's all very well,' he said, 'for you to talk.
You've never been poor and ambitious and hard run, and you don't know
what temptation can amount to. You've got your money back again to the
last penny. It's in Stubbs' hands, and I've stood the racket. And if the
father did you a bad turn the son has done you a good one.'

'Will you kindly go away, Mr. Jervase?' said the Major.

'Yes,' said Jervase, 'I'll go away. But since I'm here, I'm going to ask
you one question. Are you going to hit the boy through me?'

'Will you oblige me,' said Major de Blacquaire, 'by going to the devil?'

'Are you a-going,' said John Jervase, 'to make a scandal of this
business when you get home again? I've paid your lawyer to the last
farthing. My cousin's hooked it with pretty near a quarter of a million
sterling, and gone out to Venezuela. And if I hadn't struck on a pretty
fat thing in the way of a contract for forage and horseflesh for these
French chaps here, I should have been pretty well a bankrupt. But I
found the money, and you're as well off as you would have been if old
General Airey had never heard my name.'

'That is good news to a poor man,' said De Blacquaire. 'And now, my dear
sir, _will_ you oblige me by going to the devil?'

'Are you a-going to make a scandal about this business when we get home
again?' Jervase asked.

'No, you purblind clown,' said Major de Blacquaire, rising, and fitting
his crutches to his armpits. 'I am not. You have about as much notion
of what a man is bound to do under these conditions as an ox would have.