“What for?” said Lionel.
“To write to your father!”
“Ha—ha—ha! Ha—ha—ha!” laughed Lionel, half angrily dashing away his companion’s hand, half with contempt. “Are you going to tell him that I have been a naughty boy, and to ask him to come up with a stick?”
“No!” said Harry, quietly, almost sadly, “but to ask him to relieve me of my responsibility;” and then he left the room.
“A confounded prig!” cried Lionel; “he grows insufferable.” Then throwing his half-smoked cigar from the window in his impatience, the lighted fragment struck a heavy-faced man who was leaning against a lamp-post, and staring up at the window of the well-lighted room.
The man dashed his hand to his face, growled, muttered, shook his fist at the window, and then stooped, picked up the piece of cigar, knocked away the few remaining sparks, and deposited it in his pocket, when he gave another glance upwards as he said, audibly—
“Look out, my fine fellow!—look out!”
Lionel lit a fresh cigar and strolled up and down the room for a few moments. “Coming to a nice pass,” he muttered. “Just as if one couldn’t indulge in a little piece of innocent flirtation without being taken to task like that!”
“No, Master Harry!” he said, after another turn or two. “I’m not blind either, saint as you look—St Anthony if you like. She really is uncommonly pretty, though. I liked that dove-scene, too; natural evidently—but she can’t be that old rag-and-famish dog-stealer’s daughter. The idea of Harry flying out like that! The beggar was jealous, I’ll swear. Well, let him go if he can’t act like a man of the world.”
Harry Clayton did not mutter as he went to his room, but thoughts of a troublous nature came quickly. It was only by an effort that he composed himself to write a calm cool letter to Sir Richard Redgrave, stating nothing relative to what had passed, but merely asking him to make fresh arrangements respecting his son, if he still wished him to have the counterpoise of a quiet companion, since it was the writer’s wish to return immediately to Cambridge.