“Not he. Well, you’ve made a pretty little fool of yourself, missie. What are you going to do now?”
“That’s what you’ve got to tell me.”
“I? Oh, I dare say. No, no; you got into the scrape and you can get out of it. And—-” He suddenly recollected his duties. “Look here, Agatha, I must—hang it, Agatha, I shouldn’t be doing my duty as—as a grandfather if I didn’t say that it’s a monstrous disgraceful thing of you to have done. Yes, d——d disgraceful;” and he took a pinch of snuff with an air of severe virtue.
“Yes, dear; but you shouldn’t swear, should you?”
Lord Thrapston felt that he had spoilt the moral effect of his reproof, and, without dwelling further on that aspect of the subject, he addressed his mind to the more practical question. The outcome, different as the source was, was the same old verdict.
“We must tell Calder, my dear. It isn’t right to keep him in the dark.”
“I can’t tell him. Why must he be told?”
“Well,” said Lord Thrapston, “it’s just possible, Aggy, that he may have something to say to it, isn’t it?”
“I don’t mind what he says,” declared Agatha.
“Eh? Why, I thought you were so fond of him.”