Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/301

Rh right to be—no right of brains, or heart, or breeding. I must admit, now I think of it, that he has several scores to wipe off; and judging from the way he begins, he will wipe hard. Let him!"

"No, no," I protested. "You mustn't let him. It's too much. You will have to tell Sir Samuel that he must find a new chauffeur at once. It hurts me like a blow to think of such a creature humiliating you. I could n't see it done."

He looked at me very kindly, with quite all a brother's tenderness. "My dear little pal," he said, "you won't have to see it."

"You mean—you will go?" Of course, I wanted him to take my advice, or I would n't have offered it, yet it gave me a heartache to think he was ready to take it so easily.

"I mean that I 'm not the man to let myself be humiliated by a Bertie Stokes. Possibly he may persuade his stepfather to sack me, but I don't think he 'll succeed in doing that, even if he tries. Sir Samuel, I suppose, has given him every thing he has; sent him to Oxford (I know he was there, and scraped through by the skin of his teeth), and allows him thousands enough to mix with a set where he does n't belong; but though the old boy is weak in some ways, he has a strong sense of justice, and where he likes he is loyal. I think he does like me, and I don't believe he 'd discharge me to please his step-son. Not only that, I should be surprised if the promising Bertie wanted me discharged. It would be more in his line to want me kept on, so that he might take it out of me."