Oh, how could Raymond talk like that? and what would become of him? Ashamed to go third class! ashamed to say they were poor! Oh, if only Reginald had been the eldest brother, what a difference it would have made.
Raymond got out at the junction, where they had to wait for the up-train, to smoke a cigar. His friend did not accompany him, and he and Salome were left together. With ready tact he saw that she would prefer silence to conversation, and he only asked her if she would like the window quite closed, as it was so damp, picked up a flower which had fallen from Thomas's basket, and then unfolded a newspaper.
The next minute a young man looked in at the window and said, "I thought I saw you at Fairchester. How are you, old fellow?"
"I am going down into Cornwall till term begins. I say, there's Wilton! As much side on as ever, I suppose. Bragging as usual, eh?"
Henry St. Clair tried to make it evident by a sign that remarks about Raymond were to be stopped.
"Never was such a fellow for brag. I have been staying near Fairchester, and I heard the other day that the whole family were left without a farthing and heaps of debts. Is it true?"
"I don't know," said Henry St. Clair. "Have you seen Barnard lately?"
"No. What makes you ask? I say, St. Clair, what's up?"
"The _up_-train. Now we are off. Here comes Wilton."
Raymond came sauntering up, and knocking the ashes from his cigar, threw it away.
"You extravagant fellow!" St. Clair exclaimed.
"You ought not to smoke at all, according to Eton rules," exclaimed the other boy, as he ran away to take his place in another part of the train.
"He has been staying near Fairchester, he says," St. Clair replied carelessly, and then he began to read his paper.
"Near Fairchester!" thought Raymond; "then he will have heard all about us. Whom can he have been staying with, I wonder? How stupid Salome is sitting there like a dummy when she might talk, as she can talk sometimes, and be agreeable. One can't go about the world airing one's pauperism; it's such nonsense."
The rest of the journey passed without much conversation. The Wiltons were to get out at a small station where there was a junction of two miles to Roxburgh. Henry St. Clair was going on to Harstone. He helped Salome, and even said to Raymond, "Here, take your sister's bag and umbrella, Wilton."