"Bother the girl!" muttered Adrian. "Why can't she let us have our smoke in peace?" and he held back as Arthur went to meet the young lady.
"We are going to have a dance, Mr. Murray. Can you come and help us?" she said.
"To be sure we can. Come along, Ted! That is my cousin's old name among us," he explained, as he waited for Adrian to join them.
"I don't care much about dancing," said that young gentleman. "I think, Arthur, you must do duty for me."
"Oh, that be hanged! Come and shake yourself out of the megrims; it will do you more good than smoking and brooding here over your wrongs." And Arthur tried to drag him to the steps leading up to the balcony, upon which the drawing-room opened.
He allowed himself to be taken up the steps without much protest, but when he reached a chair, he dropped into it, and declared he would not stir another step to please anybody.
"I hate dancing," he said, "and I don't see why I should be expected to fag myself to please a parcel of shopkeepers."
Ethel Brading had gone into the drawing-room, and Arthur hoped she had not heard what was said, but he went up to his cousin, and, speaking in a lower tone, he asked what he meant by accepting Mr. Brading's hospitality, and then behaving like that. "Don't be a cad, Adrian! I hate such meanness," protested Arthur. "What has come to you that you cannot behave like a gentleman?"
"I behave according to the company I am in," sullenly muttered the young fellow.
"Very well, I won't talk to a cad," said Arthur. And he turned on his heel and went into the drawing-room.