She bit her lip. "I wish you wouldn't be so horribly imitative, Bunny. You never used to talk like that."
Bunny flared up on the instant. "I'll talk as I damn' well please! It's no affair of yours. As to leaving Jake, I'm hanged if I will! You can jolly well go by yourself!"
"And as to behaving like a beastly bounder, you'll apologize for it before you leave this room," a soft voice said.
Both started violently. Jake had come up the steps from the garden. He walked over to the mantelpiece, searched for and found a box of matches; then turned.
"If we were alone, my son, I'd punch your head for you. Maud is quite right. You've no call to talk like a cowboy. Now apologize--quick!"
But Bunny stood sullenly silent.
Maud turned to the door. "Pray don't trouble to make him do that!" she said. "I am accustomed to cowboy manners."
The door closed upon her, and in the same instant Jake's hand closed upon Bunny's shoulder.
"Go after her!" he commanded, "Catch her up, and say you're sorry!"
But Bunny resisted him. "I won't, Jake. I'm not sorry. And I won't go and stay with Uncle Edward. There! If you send me, I'll run away."