I suppose, Squire Carne, you thought
that low of me because I made a fuss about being larruped, the same as
a Frenchman I pulled out of the water did about my doing of it, as if I
could have helped it. No Englishman would have said much about that;
but they seem to make more fuss than we do. And I dare say it was
French-like of me, to go on about my hiding."
"Daniel," answered Caryl Carne, in alarm at this British sentiment; "as
a man of self-respect, you have only one course left, if your father
refuses to apologise. You must cast off his tyranny; you must prove
yourself a man; you must begin life upon your own account. No more
of this drudgery, and slavery for others, who allow you no rights in
return. But a nobler employment among free people, with a chance of
asserting your courage and manhood, and a certainty that no man will
think you his bondslave because you were born upon his land, or in his
house. My father behaved to me--well, it does not matter. He might have
repented of it, if he had lived longer; and I feel ashamed to speak of
it, after such a case as yours. But behold, how greatly it has been
for my advantage! Without that, I might now have been a true and simple
Englishman!"
Carne (who had taken most kindly to the fortune which made him an
untrue Englishman) clapped his breast with both hands; not proudly, as
a Frenchman does, nor yet with that abashment and contempt of
demonstration which make a true Briton very clumsy in such doings; while
Daniel Tugwell, being very solid, and by no means "emotional"--as people
call it nowadays--was looking at him, to the utmost of his power (which
would have been greater by daylight), with gratitude, and wonder, and
consideration, and some hesitation about his foreign sentiments.
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