“I’ll not hear the matter discussed,” loudly interposed Mr Lester. “Hold your tongue, Cherry. Alvar will have to mind what he is about. I’m sick of the sound of his name. If he had a good English one of his own it would be something.”
“Why hasn’t he, then?” was on the tip of Cherry’s tongue, but he suppressed it; and as his grandmother walked away, saying that it was time to dress for dinner, he got up and stood near his father.
“I say, dad, never mind; we’ll get along somehow,” he said.
The expression of passionate irritation passed out of Mr Lester’s face, and was succeeded by a look of regretful affection as he put his hand on his favourite son’s shoulder.
“I’d give half I’m worth, my boy, to undo it. It’s a wrong to you, Cherry—a wrong. It gives me no pleasure to think of the place in his hands after I’m gone.”
“Father,” interposed Cheriton firmly, “the only wrong is in speaking of it so. It is no wrong to any of us. And you know,” he added shyly and under his breath, “mamma would never let us think so.”
Mr Lester was a person who would not endure a touch on his tenderest feelings. He had never mentioned the young wife, whose word had been his law, to the son whom he adored for her sake, and who influenced his violent yet impressionable nature by the inheritance of hers. That influence led him to listen to the words which he could not controvert; but he did not love his unknown son the better for the pain which this defence of him had cost him. Cheriton felt that he had ventured almost too far, and he turned off the subject after a pause, by saying quaintly,—
“I wonder what the fox thinks of it all.”
“What d’ye mean?”
“Don’t you remember that old lady who came to see granny once, and when Jack and I raved about a day’s hunting, would say nothing but ‘I wonder what the fox thinks of it all?’ That was making the other side much too important, wasn’t it?”