Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/208

188 urgent quest of a “special,” or “gentleman convict,” as such as Tom were termed. The applicant was a genial greybeard, with a philosophic eye, which looked Tom well up and down at their interview.

“What I want,” said he, “is a tutor for my son. I hear you are a University man. May I ask what makes you stare?”

“I a tutor!”

“Well?”

“You can’t know what I was transported for.”

“Oh, yes, I do. I could wish it had been for something else, certainly; but that doesn’t make you any the less a University man. And the other specials seem to be a poor lot, and I mean to give you a trial. But we’ll drop that name of yours, which I’m afraid may be known in my house, and you shall start fair. In half an hour then, Jones, I shall call for you in my chaise.”

And Tom actually found himself quite a privileged member of a decent household before he had time to realise his good fortune. The other servants were ordered to treat him with respect. His pupil was put entirely in his charge. He had his meals with the family, and had revelled for one night in a deliciously clean bed and bedroom, when the master of the house came to him in the morning with a very wry face.

“It’s all up, Jones,” said that philosopher, with the blunt intimacy which had made Tom like him from the first. “My good wife has discovered who you are, and she refuses to leave her bed while you remain in the house. She has read of you in the English papers, confound them, and she simply won’t have you on the premises! It seems unreasonable when you consider that our cook was a bloodthirsty baby-farmer, our coachman