"My boy," he most earnestly besought me, "will you not heed me?"
"I'll hear you, sir," I answered.
"Attend, then," says he. "I have brought you here to warn you, and my
warning is but half spoken. Frankly, in this I have no concern for
your happiness, with which I have nothing to do: I have been moved to
this ungrateful and most dangerous interview by a purely selfish
regard for my own career. Do you know the word? A political career of
some slight importance," he added, with a toss of the head, "which is
now menaced, at a most critical moment, by that merciless, wicked old
pirate whom you have shamelessly been deceived into calling your uncle
Nicholas. To be frank with you, you are, and have been for several
years, an obstacle. My warning, however, as you will believe, is
advanced upon grounds advantageous to yourself. Put the illusions of
this designing old bay-noddie away from you," says he, now
accentuating his earnestness with a lean, white forefinger. "Rid
yourself of these rings and unsuitable garments: they disgrace you.
When the means of their possession is disclosed to you--when the
wretched crime of it is made known--you will suffer such humiliation
as you did not dream a man could feel. Put 'em away. Put 'em out of
sight and mind. Send that young man from London back to the business
he came from. A tutor! Your tutor! Tom Callaway's son with an English
tutor! You are being made a ghastly fool of; and I warn you that you
will pay for every moment of the illusion. Poor lad!" cries he, in
genuine distress. "Poor lad!"
It might be: I had long thought so.
"And as for this grand tour abroad," he began, with an insolently
curling lip, "why, for God's sake! don't be a--"
"Sir!" I interrupted, in a rage.
There had been talk of a trip abroad: it seemed I was bound upon it,
by advice of Sir Harry, to further my education and to cure my foot of
its twist.
"Well," the gray personage laughed, "being what you are, remembering
what I have with candor and exact honesty told you, if you can permit
this old pirate--"