“There is no reason for you to tell me what to do,” said Alvar quietly.
“It’s not, you know,” said Jack, “that I think there’s any harm in it. My views are very liberal. I only think it’s a frivolous and unmanly sort of instrument; but the governor won’t like it, and there’ll be no end of a row.”
“You have not a musical soul,” said Alvar loftily, for he had had time to cool down somewhat.
“Certainly not,” said the liberal Jack, with unnecessary energy and a tone of disgust; “but that’s not the question. It’s not the custom here to play that sort of thing on a thing like that on a Sunday morning. Ask Cherry.”
“Would it vex my brother?” asked Alvar.
“If you mean Cheriton, it certainly would. He hates a row.”
“A row?” said the puzzled Alvar, “that is a noise—my guitar?”
“Oh, hang it! no, a quarrel,” began Jack, when suddenly—
“Sir, I consider this an act of defiance; I beg I may see that instrument put away at once,” and Mr Lester’s voice took the threatening sound that made his anger always appear so much worse than it really was. “I will have the proprieties of my house observed, and no example of this kind set to your younger brothers.”
Alvar had taken Jack’s interference with cool contempt, but now he started up with a look of such passion as fairly subdued Jack into a hasty—