"Max first, and then I learned the rest from the guesses of the girls. Oh, it is dreadful—shocking! And to think of his having been planted down upon us like this, just when I was beginning to hope that Doreen was getting kinder to Mr. Lindsay."
"It's all the doing of that idiot Max!" said Mr. Wedmore, angrily. "I'll send him out to the Cape, and make an end of it. He shall go next month."
"Oh, I didn't want that," pleaded Mrs. Wedmore, with a sudden change to tenderness and self-reproach. "Don't do anything in a hurry, George, anything you will be sorry for afterward."
"Sorry for! The only thing I'm sorry for is that I didn't send him before, and saved all this."
"And as for the girl, no doubt it's her fault, and Dudley's, a great deal more than Max's," went on the mother of Max, with the usual feminine excuse for the darling scapegrace. "When she's gone he will forget all about her, as he always does."
This speech was an unlucky one.
"Yes, that's just what I complain of, that he always forgets," said he, turning sharply upon his wife. "If he would stick to anything or to anybody for so much as a week, or a day, or an hour, I shouldn't mind so much. But he isn't man enough for that. As soon as this girl's out of the house, he'll be looking about for another one."
"I'm sure it wasn't his fault that she came here at all," persisted Mrs. Wedmore, who never opposed her husband except in the interest of her son. "And I'm sure you can't blame him for doing what he could for his friend, even if he does put us to a little inconvenience. After all, Dudley's been like a son to you for a great many years—"
"That's just what I complain of—that he's so like a son," interrupted her husband. "That is to say, he has brought upon us no end of worry and bother, and a bill for five guineas for this pleasant little drive down from London."
"Well, how could we refuse to take him in?"