“Take it, take it,” I muttered, “it’s
mine, I give it you, you can sell it, and buy yourself
... something you want.... Good-bye.”
I thrust the watch into his hand—and went
home at a gallop. Stopping for a moment at the
door of our common bedroom to recover my breath, I
went up to David who had just finished dressing and
was combing his hair.
“Do you know what, David?” I said in as
unconcerned a tone as I could, “I have given
away Nastasey’s watch.”
David looked at me and passed the brush over his temples.
“Yes,” I added in the same businesslike
voice, “I have given it away. There is
a very poor boy, a beggar, you know, so I have given
it to him.”
David put down the brush on the washing-stand.
“He can buy something useful,” I went
on, “with the money he can get for it.
Anyway, he will get something for it.”
I paused.
“Well,” David said at last, “that’s
a good thing,” and he went off to the schoolroom.
I followed him.
“And if they ask you what you have done with
it?” he said, turning to me.
“I shall tell them I’ve lost it,”
I answered carelessly.
No more was said about the watch between us that day;
but I had the feeling that David not only approved
of what I had done but ... was to some extent surprised
by it. He really was!
Two days more passed. It happened that no one
in the house thought of the watch. My father
was taken up with a very serious unpleasantness with
one of his clients; he had no attention to spare for
me or my watch. I, on the other hand, thought
of it without ceasing! Even the approval ...
the presumed approval of David did not quite comfort
me. He did not show it in any special way:
the only thing he said, and that casually, was that
he hadn’t expected such recklessness of me.
Certainly I was a loser by my sacrifice: it was
not counter-balanced by the gratification afforded
me by my vanity.
And what is more, as ill-luck would have it, another
schoolfellow of ours, the son of the town doctor,
must needs turn up and begin boasting of a new watch,
a present from his grandmother, and not even a silver,
but a pinch-back one....
I could not bear it, at last, and, without a word
to anyone, slipped out of the house and proceeded
to hunt for the beggar boy to whom I had given my
watch.
I soon found him; he was playing knucklebones in the
churchyard with some other boys.
I called him aside—and, breathless and
stammering, told him that my family were angry with
me for having given away the watch—and that
if he would consent to give it back to me I would
gladly pay him for it.... To be ready for any
emergency, I had brought with me an old-fashioned
rouble of the reign of Elizabeth, which represented
the whole of my fortune.
“But I haven’t got it, your watch,”
answered the boy in an angry and tearful voice; “my
father saw it and took it away from me; and he was
for thrashing me, too. ‘You must have stolen
it from somewhere,’ he said. ‘What
fool is going to make you a present of a watch?’”
