Jack listened to this with a rapidly paling face. What he had meant for a pleasant surprise had turned out a most unpleasant one after all; his little joke had very likely done all the mischief. He had been denying himself, scraping and saving for months, working extra hours when by that he could earn a few more pence, and all for this! All to send his own father to prison for a week, and to cause a great deal more than what he had saved to be spent on proving him not guilty of theft. As these thoughts came clearly before him, he stole unnoticed from the room, and went upstairs to sit down in a chair by his own bed and cry as he had hardly cried since he was a baby.
Down-stairs his absence was soon noticed.
“Where’s Jack? He must want his tea,” said Mrs. Kayll.
“I think he went upstairs,” said Madge sighing. “He scarcely stopped to hear about father. He takes things very calmly, does Jack.”
Bessie coloured at Madge’s tone, and became her favourite brother’s champion.
“Jack is too sensible to make a fuss when it won’t do any good. He’s as sorry as anybody else, I know.”
“Well, go and tell him to come to tea, Bessie,” said her mother.
The little girl went at once, and found poor Jack with his face in his hands sobbing. She was quite awe-struck, never remembering to have seen him shed a single tear--her brave manly brother, fourteen years old, who if he hurt himself only whistled, if he were scolded took it in silence, if he were ill kept the fact to himself until somebody found it out. Her Jack--crying!
She was half inclined to creep away again, feeling as though she had no business to have found him out, as he had come away here alone. But altering her mind she went and wound her arms round his neck, kissed him, called him her “dear old Jack,” dried his eyes with her own pocket-handkerchief, and cried too.
Jack sobbed on for a few minutes, then suddenly sprang to his feet, dashed his sleeve across his eyes, and tossed back his hair.
“I won’t!” he said. “What’s the good? Don’t tell them, Bessie. I’m worse than a girl!”
“And they all say you don’t care!” murmured his sister half to herself.
“Let them!” Jack returned proudly, pouring out some cold water and washing his face vigorously till the marks of tears disappeared, and the redness was not only in his eyelids but everywhere else as well. “Does it show? Will they suspect me?”