"Timothy, aunt."
The hoary-headed butler being, like Cæsar's wife, above suspicion, the Misses Blake are pulled up pretty short,—so short, indeed, that they forget to ask if any one besides the respectable Timothy was at the obnoxious back gate. Perhaps had they known that the smith's son, and two or three other young men, had been there, and that all had been talking the most violent politics, their fears for Terence's morality would have increased rather than diminished.
As it is, they are well pleased.
"But why didn't you say that at once, my dear boy? We are so afraid of your mixing with evil companions."
Terence thinks of the smith's son, and his unqualified opinion that all landlords and aristocrats and sovereigns should be "stamped out," and wonders if he would come under the category of evil companions, but he wisely refrains from speech.
"And," says Miss Penelope, softly, "why didn't you tell us before leaving the house where you were going? I am sure, if you had, both your aunt Priscilla and I would have been delighted to go with you, busy though we were."
This is the climax. Again in Terence's fevered imagination the smith's son arises, wielding his brawny brown arm like a sledge-hammer, as he noisily lays down the laws of extermination: he can see himself, too, joining in the fray, and defying the smith's son's opinion with an eloquence of which he had been only proud. He feels he is deceiving these two old ladies, and is angry with himself for doing it, and still more angry with them for making him do it.
"I am glad we have heard the truth at last, Terence," says Miss Priscilla. "There is nothing so mean or contemptible as a lie."
"You are enough to make any fellow tell a lie," bursts out Terence, with miserable rage, "with your questionings and pryings!"
At this awful speech, the two Misses Blake burst into tears, and Terence dashes in a fury from the room.