"Be good enough to turn round this way. I don't understand what you're saying. Perhaps you'll take a chair, and leave poor Mildred alone."
Mildred whispered: "Oh, Hugh, be careful. I'll do anything for you if you won't get him worked up. It'll hurt his face—and his poor eye."
Hugh slouched—the word is Mrs. Rossiter's—to a nearby chair, where he sat down in a hunched position, his hands in his trousers pockets and his feet thrust out before him. The attitude was neither graceful nor respectful to the company.
"It's no use talking, father," he declared, sulkily, "because I've said my last word."
"Oh no, you haven't, for I haven't said my first."
In the tone in which Hugh cried out there must have been something of the plea of a little boy before he is punished:
"Please don't give me any orders, father, because I sha'n't be able to obey them."
"Hugh, your expression 'sha'n't be able to obey' is not in the vocabulary with which I'm familiar."
"But it's in the one with which I am."
"Then you've probably learnt it from Ethel's little servant—I've forgotten the name—"