They have said nothing about it to me; but I know Uncle Horace will
ask you, and then you must confess. It will be best to tell him
without waiting till you must; he will not think so badly of you."
But Percy could not be persuaded to do this; he lacked the moral
courage to follow his sister's advice and to confess all to his uncle
before he should be obliged to do so, hoping that after all she might
be mistaken and that he should still escape that humiliation. Since
Colonel Rush had not spoken at once upon the subject, Percy believed
that he would not do so at all, either because he had no knowledge
of these money transactions or because he thought the matter of no
importance.
"Why should Uncle Horace worry himself about Hannah's money?" he said
to his sister. "She is nothing to him, and what she chooses to do
with it is no business of his. She is not his servant."
"No," said the sensible and more far-sighted Lena; "but she is in his
house. And you are his nephew and under his care, and he must think
it strange that a servant would send you so much money and in such a
secret way, and he must know that something is wrong; he must suspect
that you are in some very bad scrape."
But Percy was still immovable. Easily swayed as he was in general, he
was not to be influenced in the only right direction now, and all
Lena's arguments were thrown away.
"But I say, Lena," he said, with a sudden change of subject and with
his usual, easy-going facility for putting aside for the time being
anything which troubled him, "I say, isn't it queer that the girl you
are all trying to win this prize for should be the sister of
Seabrooke? How things do come around, to be sure.
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