“What is it, Aunt Margaret?”
“This,” said his aunt, as she sat down in the armchair, and held out the key.
“What is it that you mean?” said Guy, with a sudden look of being on his guard, and much in the tone of her own question to John Cooper.
“You left your cupboard open, Guy, and John Cooper, very properly, locked it up, and gave me the key. What should a lad of your age do with a bottle of brandy?”
“Confound John Cooper’s meddling impertinence!” said Guy, passionately. “It is nothing to him or to any one what I choose to keep there.”
“That depends upon the use you make of it.”
“Has John Cooper been setting it about that I’ve been drinking?” said Guy, with an angry laugh. “Is that—is that what it looks like?”
He caught himself up with a start, and turning away to the window, stood staring out of it, while his aunt said—
“It’s a matter I’ll have cleared up, Guy, before I answer all your questions of this morning. I’ve known many young fellows take a drop too much in company. That wasn’t thought so much of when I was young. But it’s different nowadays; and what that bottle of brandy means, if it means anything at all, is a very different matter again.”
Whether Guy was struggling with temper or embarrassment, or whether he really did not know what to say, he was silent for some time. At last he turned round, and said ungraciously—“On my word and honour, I don’t drink. I have never been drunk in my life—yet.”