"I come from mamma. She would have sent me before, but I caught cold,
and was in bed all last week."
Mr. Hamlyn rose. It was a momentous predicament, but he must do the best
he could in it. He was a man of nice honour, and he wished with all his
heart that the earth would open and engulf him. "Eliza, my love, allow
me to deal with this matter," he said, his voice taking a low, tender,
considerate tone. "I will question the boy in another room. Some
mistake, I reckon."
"No, Philip, you must put your questions before me," she said, resolute
in her anger. "What is it you are fearing? Better tell me all, however
disreputable it may be."
"I dare not tell you," he gasped; "it is not--I fear--the disreputable
thing you may be fancying."
"Not dare! By what right do you call this gentleman 'papa'?" she
passionately demanded of the child.
"Mamma told me to. She would never let me come home to him before
because of not wishing to part from me."
Mrs. Hamlyn gazed at him. "Where were you born?"
"At Calcutta; that's in India. Mamma brought me home in the _Clipper of
the Seas_, and the ship went down, but quite everybody was not lost in
it, though papa thought so."
The boy had evidently been well instructed. Eliza Hamlyn, grasping the
whole truth now, staggered back in terror.
"Philip! Philip! is it true? Was it _this_ you feared?"
He made a motion of assent and covered his face. "Heaven knows I would
rather have died.
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