"Oh! but think, Miss Tyrrell," remonstrated Peter, unmistakably shocked at this unfilial attitude towards a distinguished parent; "if he was—er—dangerous, he would not be upon the Bench now, surely!"
She glanced over her shoulder, with evident apprehension.
"How you frightened me!" she said. "I thought he was really there! But I hope they'll shut him up in future, so that he won't be able to do any more mischief. You didn't tell me how you got hold of him. Was it by his chain, or his tail?"
Peter did not know; and, besides, it was as difficult for him to picture himself in the act of seizing a hypochondriacal judge by his watch-chain or coat-tail, as it was for him to comprehend the utter want of feeling that could prompt such a question from the sufferer's own daughter.
"I hope," he said, with a gravity which he intended as a rebuke—"I hope I treated him with all the respect and consideration possible under the—er—circumstances.... I am sorry that that remark appears to amuse you!"
For Miss Tyrrell was actually laughing, with a merriment in which there was nothing forced.
"How can I help it?" she said, as soon as she could speak. "It is too funny to hear you talking of being regretful and considerate to a horrid monkey!"
"A monkey!" he repeated involuntarily.
So it was a monkey that was under restraint, and not a Judge of Her Majesty's Supreme Court of Judicature: a discovery which left him as much in the dark as to what particular service he had rendered as ever, and made him tremble to think what he might have said. But apparently, by singular good fortune, he had not committed himself beyond recovery; for Miss Tyrrell only said: