Mr. Bankes flung back his head and laughed. But whether he was laughing at them, or at his own words, or at his recollections of the past, was more than they could say. They looked at each other, conscious that their host was not the least part of the afternoon's entertainment, and somewhat at a loss as to whether he was drawing the long bow, taking them to be younger and more verdant than they were, or whether he was seriously advancing an educational system of his own.
He startled them by putting a question point-blank to Bailey, one which he had put before.
"I--I don't know!" stammered Bertie. Then, frankly, as the idea occurred to him, "Because I never thought of it."
Mr. Bankes laughed. His constant tendency to laughter, with or without apparent reason, seemed to be his not least remarkable characteristic.
"Now you have thought of it, why don't you run away?"
Bailey turned the matter over in his mind.
His friends looked at each other, thinking the conversation just a trifle queer.
"Why ever should he run away?" asked Griffin.
"And wherever would he run to?" added Wheeler.
Dick Ellis said nothing, but possibly he thought the more. Mr. Bankes directed his reply directly at Bailey.
"I'll tell you why you ought to run away; because that's the shortest cut into a world into which you will never get by any other road. I'll tell you where you ought to run to, out of this little fleabite of an island, into the lands of golden dreams and golden possibilities, my lad; where men at night lay themselves down poor, and in the morning rise up rich."
Mr. Bankes, warming with his theme, began to gesticulate and stamp about the room, the boys following him with all their eyes.
"I hate your huggermuggering existence; why should a lad of parts huggermugger all his life away? When I saw you stand up to that great lout, I said to myself, 'That lad has grit; he's just the very spit of what I was when I was just his age; he's too good to be left to muddle in this old worn-out country, to waste his time with books and sums and trash.' I said to myself, 'I'll lend him a helping hand,' and so I will. I'll show you the road, if I do nothing else; and if you don't choose to take it, it's yourself's to blame, not me.