He began to laugh, but stopped abruptly as Julian, who was seated near him, with a sudden, clumsy movement, upset a stream of cocoa across the breakfast-table. This created an instant diversion. Mr. Lorimer turned upon him vindictively, and soundly smacked his head, Mrs. Lorimer covered her face and wept, and Avery, with Gracie close behind, hurried to remedy the disaster.
Ranald came to help her in his quiet, gentlemanly way, dabbing up the thick brown stream with his table-napkin. Pat slipped round to his mother and hugged her hard. And Olive, the only unmoved member of the party, looked on with contemptuous eyes the while she continued her breakfast. Jeanie still breakfasted upstairs in the schoolroom, and so missed the fracas.
"The place is a pig-sty!" declared Mr. Lorimer, roused out of all complacence and casting dainty phraseology to the winds. "And you, sir,"—he addressed his second son,—"wholly unfit for civilized society. Go upstairs, and—if you have any appetite left after this disgusting exhibition—satisfy it in the nursery!"
Julian, crimson but wholly unashamed, flung up his head defiantly and walked to the door.
"Stop!" commanded Mr. Lorimer, ere he reached it.
Julian stopped.
His father looked him up and down with gradually returning composure. "You will not go to the nursery," he said. "You will go to the study and there suffer the penalty for insolence."
"Stephen!" broke from Mrs. Lorimer in anguished protest.
"A beastly shame!" cried Gracie vehemently, flinging discretion to the winds; she adored her brother Julian. "He never spoke a single word!"
"Go, Julian!" said Mr. Lorimer.