Tom ran in to Philip, who was enjoying his afternoon’s holiday at the piano, in the drawing-room, picking out tunes for himself and singing them. He was supremely happy, perched like an amorphous bundle on the high stool, with his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on the opposite cornice, and his lips wide open, sending forth, with all his might, impromptu syllables to a tune of Arne’s which had hit his fancy.
“Come, Philip,” said Tom, bursting in; “don’t stay roaring ‘la la’ there; come and see old Poulter do his sword-exercise in the carriage-house!”
The jar of this interruption, the discord of Tom’s tones coming across the notes to which Philip was vibrating in soul and body, would have been enough to unhinge his temper, even if there had been no question of Poulter the drilling-master; and Tom, in the hurry of seizing something to say to prevent Mr Poulter from thinking he was afraid of the sword when he sprang away from it, had alighted on this proposition to fetch Philip, though he knew well enough that Philip hated to hear him mention his drilling-lessons. Tom would never have done so inconsiderate a thing except under the severe stress of his personal pride.
Philip shuddered visibly as he paused from his music. Then turning red, he said, with violent passion,—
“Get away, you lumbering idiot! Don’t come bellowing at me; you’re not fit to speak to anything but a cart-horse!”
It was not the first time Philip had been made angry by him, but Tom had never before been assailed with verbal missiles that he understood so well.
“I’m fit to speak to something better than you, you poor-spirited imp!” said Tom, lighting up immediately at Philip’s fire. “You know I won’t hit you, because you’re no better than a girl. But I’m an honest man’s son, and your father’s a rogue; everybody says so!”
Tom flung out of the room, and slammed the door after him, made strangely heedless by his anger; for to slam doors within the hearing of Mrs Stelling, who was probably not far off, was an offence only to be wiped out by twenty lines of Virgil. In fact, that lady did presently descend from her room, in double wonder at the noise and the subsequent cessation of Philip’s music. She found him sitting in a heap on the hassock, and crying bitterly.
“What’s the matter, Wakem? what was that noise about? Who slammed the door?”
Philip looked up, and hastily dried his eyes. “It was Tulliver who came in—to ask me to go out with him.”