“The fact is, I’m—married.”
There were some hard and bitter things said between his father and the boy. The boy fumbled—he obviously had been drinking—between would not or could not say very much as to who it was that he had married.
Harry said, “Who are her people? That’s a plain question, isn’t it?”
Huggo, very red, increasingly difficult to understand, said, “It’s a plain enough question. It’s a plain enough question. I’ve come here to be perfectly frank and plain and plain enough question. The fact is I don’t know very much about her plain enough people.”
Rosalie broke out of the frozen stupefaction that had numbed her. “Huggo, you must know. You must know who her people are.”
Huggo turned a very slow gaze around from his father to his mother. He looked at her. He said with astonishing violence, “Well, I tell you I don’t. People! What have her people got to do with it? I haven’t married her people. She’s my little girl and I’ve married her, not her people. Isn’t that enough for you?”
Harry got up and went over to him. “Look here, you’d better run along. You’re not in a fit state to talk to your mother. I’m not sure you’re in a fit state to talk to any-body or to know what you’re saying. You’d better go, my boy. We’ll go into this in the morning. Come round early in the morning. We’ll settle it then.”
He was passing with Huggo through the door when Doda, equipped for her dance, came running down the stairs. “Hull-o, Huggo! Why, I haven’t seen you for weeks. Where have you been?”
Huggo, standing unsteadily, unsteadily regarded her. “Point is, where are you going? All dressed up and somewhere to go! I’ll bet you have! I’ve seen you jazzing about the place when you haven’t seen me, Dods. And heard about you! There was a chap with me watching you at the Riddle Club the other night told me some pretty fierce—”
“Oh, dash, I’ve left my fan,” cried Doda, and turned and ran back up the stairs.