he was still a loser, mind—and at once he settled debts of his own, which he could not bear. You have nothing to recover but revenge, and if you take that revenge you publicly ruin your own son, you make yourself a laughing stock, you throw away your future honours and his, and you disgrace a man of high Academic distinction whom you know perfectly well to have acted only weakly and foolishly. You or I might have acted in precisely the same fashion. He has not had a penny of your money."
"I am the loser," said Mr. Brassington quietly. "I have lost through ridicule and I have lost materially—I have lost Two Thousand Pounds."
"The Government," said Mr. Kirby, with a sudden change of tone to the commonplace, "inform me, Brassington, that you 've planned a very generous act. They inform me—anyhow, Hogg informed me this morning, or, to be more accurate, I informed Hogg—that, as the most prominent citizen of Ormeston, you have put Ten Thousand Pounds at the disposal of Professor Higginson, whose present fame throughout the world" (he bowed pleasantly to the Don, who was fool enough to bow in return) "I need not—er—dwell
