Owen had recovered from the first startling effect of hearing those two names coupled together; but he was inwardly raging and lavishing a variety of the most unparliamentary epithets on Theodore.
"If you ask my candid opinion, I don't think it likely," he answered curtly.
"Of course not!" exclaimed the boy. "It's only Theodore's bounce; I told mother so."
"Why, you don't mean that Bransby has the confounded impudence to say——"
"No, no," interposed Mrs. Bransby. "Don't let us exaggerate. Theodore has never made any explicit statement on the subject. But he meets May very frequently in society. He is constantly invited by Mrs. Dormer-Smith. They are thrown a great deal together. May has evidently become much more kind and gracious to him of late—for I remember when she used positively to run away from him!—and as for him, he is as much attached to her as he can be to any human being. I do believe that."
"Attached your granny!" cried Martin, apparently unable to find a polite phrase strong enough to convey his deep disdain. "Theodore is much attached to number one, and that's about the beginning and the end of his attachments!"
"Hush, Martin," said his mother severely. "You are talking of what you don't understand. And you know how much I dislike to hear you use that tone about—your brother."
She brought out the word "brother" with an obvious effort. In truth, she had a repugnance to speaking, or even thinking, of Theodore as her children's brother. But it was a repugnance for which she blamed herself.
"I think," she added, "that you had better go to bed, Martin."
The boy rose with an instant obedience, which had not always characterized him in the happy Oldchester days, and bent over his mother to kiss her.