“See here, Charity—you're always telling me I've got no rights over you. There might be two ways of looking at that—but I ain't going to argue it. All I know is I raised you as good as I could, and meant fairly by you always except once, for a bad half-hour. There's no justice in weighing that half-hour against the rest, and you know it. If you hadn't, you wouldn't have gone on living under my roof. Seems to me the fact of your doing that gives me some sort of a right; the right to try and keep you out of trouble. I'm not asking you to consider any other.”
She listened in silence, and then gave a slight laugh. “Better wait till I'm in trouble,” she said. He paused a moment, as if weighing her words. “Is that all your answer?”
“Yes, that's all.”
“Well—I'll wait.”
He turned away slowly, but as he did so the thing she had been waiting for happened; the door opened again and Harney entered.
He stopped short with a face of astonishment, and then, quickly controlling himself, went up to Mr. Royall with a frank look.
“Have you come to see me, sir?” he said coolly, throwing his cap on the table with an air of proprietorship.
Mr. Royall again looked slowly about the room; then his eyes turned to the young man.
“Is this your house?” he inquired.
Harney laughed: “Well—as much as it's anybody's. I come here to sketch occasionally.”