"Yes, indeed."
"One is apt to be prejudiced in one's father's favour, of course," said Harcourt. "That is to say, when one hasn't seen him for twenty years or so. A more common, constant knowledge, perhaps, puts the prejudice the other way."
"Sir Lionel is undoubtedly a very pleasant man; no one, I fancy, could help liking his society."
"I understand it all as well as though you had written a book about him. You have none of that great art, Bertram, which teaches a man to use his speech to conceal his thoughts."
"Why should I wish to conceal my thoughts from you?"
"I know exactly what you mean about your father: he is no martinet in society, even with his son. He assumes to himself no mysterious unintelligible dignity. He has none of the military Grimgruffenuff about him. He takes things easily, and allows other people to do the same."
"Exactly."
"But this was not exactly what you wanted. If he had treated you as though a father and son were necessarily of a different order of beings, had he been a little less familiar, a little colder, perhaps a thought more stern and forbidding in his parental way of pushing the bottle to you, you would have liked him better?"
"No, not have liked him better; I might perhaps have thought it more natural."
"Just so; you went to look for a papa with a boy's feelings, and the papa, who had not been looking for you at all, took you for a man as you are when he found you."