"You're meditating it,—are you? I shouldn't go just at present, because I have not got a sovereign in the world. I was going to speak to you about money. You must let me have some."
"Upon my word, I like your impudence!"
"What the devil am I to do? The governor has asked me to go down to Tretton, and I can't go without a five-pound note in my pocket."
"The governor has asked you to Tretton?"
"Why not? I got a letter from him this morning." Then Augustus asked to see the letter, but Mountjoy refused to show it. From this there arose angry words, and Augustus told his brother that he did not believe him. "Not believe me? You do believe me! You know that what I say is the truth, He has asked me with all his usual soft soap. But I have refused to go. I told him that I could not go to the house of one who had injured my mother so seriously."
All that Mountjoy said as to the proposed visit to Tretton was true. The squire had written to him without mentioning the name of Augustus, and had told him that, for the present, Tretton would be the best home for him. "I will do what I can to make you happy, but you will not see a card," the squire had said. It was not the want of cards which prevented Mountjoy, but a feeling on his part that for the future there could be nothing but war between him and his father. It was out of the question that he should accept his father's hospitality without telling him of his intention, and he did not know his father well enough to feel that such a declaration would not affect him at all. He had, therefore, declined.
Then Harry Annesley's name was mentioned. "I think I've done for that fellow," said Augustus.
"What have you done?"
"I've cooked his goose. In the first place, his uncle has stopped his allowance, and in the second place the old fellow is going to marry a wife. At any rate, he has quarrelled with Master Harry á outrance. Master Harry has gone back to the parental parsonage, and is there eating the bread of affliction and drinking the waters of poverty. Flossy Mountjoy may marry him if she pleases. A girl may marry a man now without leave from anybody. But if she does my dear cousin will have nothing to eat."
"And you have done this?"