‘This is Robert’s doing!’ was Mervyn’s first exclamation, when Phœbe gave him the letter. ‘If there be an intolerable plague in the world, it is the having a fanatical fellow like that in the family. Nice requital for all I have thrown away for the sake of his maggots! I declare I’ll resume every house I’ve let him have for his tomfooleries, and have a gin bottle blown as big as an ox as a sign for each of them.’
Phœbe had a certain lurking satisfaction in observing, when his malediction had run itself down, ‘He never consulted Robert.’
‘Don’t tell me that! As if Robert had not run about with his mouth open, reviling his father’s trade, and pluming himself on keeping out of it.’
‘Mervyn, you know better! Robert had said no word against you! It is the facts that speak for themselves.’
‘The facts? You little simpleton, do you imagine that we distil the juices of little babies?’
Phœbe laughed, and he added kindly, ‘Come, little one, I know this is no doing of yours. You have stuck by this wicked distiller of vile liquids through thick and thin. Don’t let the parson lead you nor Randolf by the nose; he is far too fine a fellow for that; but come up to town with me and Cecily, as soon as Lady Caroline’s bear fight is over, and make him hear reason.’
‘I should be very glad to go and see him, but I cannot persuade him.’
‘Why not?’
‘When a man has made up his mind, it would be wrong to try to over-persuade him, even if I believed that I could.’
‘You know the alternative?’