“Go on,” said Mr. Levi, frowning a little. How much more did the young beggar expect, at twenty-two?
“But I don’t want it. I don’t want any allowance. I’d rather be without.”
His father surveyed him during an instant of blank astonishment. The waiter entered with the whisky-and-soda Levi had ordered to be sent up after him, from the smoking-room. He tossed off the remainder of the glassful, and offered his son a drink.
“No, thanks,” coldly. He was anxious for the storm to break upon him, anxious to begin suffering his martyrdom. This dalliance with whisky, therefore, struck him as a needless compromise.
“And what does Miss Letty say to this, hey?” Levi had no idea what was at the bottom of the boy’s startling renunciation of ease and luxury; but he had been warned that young men sometimes pick up odd phases at Oxford—debts or old editions or Hedonism. Sebastian had always been of an excitable and impulsive temperament; a liquid temperament. This phase, whatever it was, would not last long. Mr. Levi twinkled indulgently from the hearthrug:
“What does little Miss Letty say to it all?”
“I—I haven’t told Letty yet.”... What would Stuart say, how would Stuart look, when told of this shattering tribute to his influence?...
“You can’t marry on nothing a year, you know that, don’t you? pretty little Letty-birds need pretty little warm nests built for them.”
“Oh”—the lad twitched impatient shoulders. Stuart had not mentioned how asceticism could be made to work in with love. He must be questioned presently on the subject.