“Highty tighty!” said the grandmother. “Here’s a spirt of temper for you!”
“Intolerable insolence!” exclaimed Mr Lester. “Under my roof he must submit to what I please to say to him.”
“It’s just what I told ye, Gerald; a foreigner’s ways are what we cannot do with,” said Mrs Lester.
“Of course,” blurted out Jack, with the laudable desire of mending matters; “of course he is a foreigner. How can you expect him to be anything else? And father never said it was his coat.”
“His coat?” said Mr Lester. “It is his temper to which I object. When he came I told him that I expected Sunday to be observed in my house, and he agreed.”
“But he did not understand that you thought that coat improper on Sunday,” said Jack with persevering justice.
“I am not in the habit of being obscure,” said Mr Lester, as he rose from the table, while Jack thought he would give Alvar a little good advice.
Cherry was too soft; he was equally impartial, and would be more plain spoken. But as he approached the library he heard an ominous tinkling, and entering, beheld Alvar, still in the objectionable coat, beginning to play on the still more objectionable guitar, an air which Jack did not think sounded like a hymn tune.
Jack really intended to mend matters, but his manner was unfortunate, and in the tone he would have used to a disobedient fag he remarked, as he stood bolt upright beside his brother,—
“I say, Alvar, I think you’d better not play on that thing this morning.”