Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/15

“We have no friends; you have tired them out—asking.”

“No impertinence,” said Gaston coldly, and the boy shrank back. Then he spoke from sullen depths:

“Well, give me money.”

Gaston laughed. “What a dutiful son!”

“Give me some money. You’ve taught me that, anyhow,” said Antoine between his teeth.

“A gratifying show of feeling! And it should be some satisfaction to the noble family of your mother to find their heir in the gutter. You will make a worthy Trent, Lord of Trent. But you shall not say I sent you away without sufficient means———”

Ste. Croix smiled as he put his hand into his pocket. (“He can’t have much cash or he wouldn’t be going away to-night,” thought Antoine with the wisdom of experience.)

“I shall give you all I have!”

Antoine took the coins from him and counted them grimly.

“Eleven francs fifty,” he said, and the hate in his eyes might have frightened most men.

“Say thank you, my sweet son.”

“No!”

“No? Then it is good-bye—but you should be very grateful to me———”

“I’m too little to understand your jokes,” said Antoine viciously, knowing that that would annoy Ste. Croix more than any other remark he could make; and he went out.

A highly comforting situation for an infant not yet ten years old. The ideas that Antoine had gathered from his mother about her family were very few and very vague. She had seldom spoken of her father—she believed the breach with him to be irrevocable. The Right Honourable Hugh, Lord Trent, sixth of the name, was violently prejudiced against the whole French nation, because one Dulac