"He said, he guessed I wanted another licking. That's the kind of Christian he is."
"Oh, please not to do that! He will think I am afraid." Here were the Squire and Rivers on two sides of this question.
"Are you afraid, John? You were once frank with me about it."
"I do not think, Mr. Rivers, you ought to ask me that." He drew up his figure as he spoke.
The rector would have liked to have whistled--a rare habit with him when alone and not in one of his moods of depression. He said, "I beg your pardon, John," and felt that he had not only done no good, but had made a mistake.
John said, "I am greatly obliged, sir." When half-way home he went back and met Rivers at his gate.
"Well," said the rector, "left anything?"
"No, sir," said the boy, his young figure stiffening, his head up. "I wasn't honest, sir." And again with his old half-lost formal way, "I--I--you might have thought--I wasn't--quite honourable. I mean--I'll never be able to forgive that blackguard until I can--can get even with him. You see, sir?"
"Yes, I see," said Rivers, who did not see, or know for a moment what to say. "Well, think it over, John. He is more a rough cub than a blackguard. Think it over."
The rector looked after the boy thinking--he's the Squire all over, with more imagination, a gentleman to the core. But how wonderfully changed, and in only eight months.
John was now, this July, allowed to ride with Leila when his uncle was otherwise occupied. He had been mounted on a safe old horse and was not spared advice from Leila, who enjoyed a little the position of mistress of equestrianism. She was slyly conscious of her comrade's mildly resentful state of mind.
"Don't pull on him so hard, John. The great thing is to get intimate with a horse's mouth. He's pretty rough, but if you wouldn't keep so stiff, you wouldn't feel it."
John began to be a little impatient. "Let us talk of something else than horses. I got a good dose of advice yesterday from Uncle Jim. I am afraid that you will be sent to school in the fall. I hate schools. You'll have no riding and snowballing, and I shall miss you. You see, I was never friends with a girl before."
"But Aunt Ann?" he queried. "I heard her tell Mr. Rivers that you must go. She said that you were too old, or would be, for snowballing and rough games and needed the society of young ladies."