“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Cyril. “Why, what a discovery, father. You asked me where I had been, and I told you—‘down the town.’ So I had. You did not ask me whether I had been anywhere else, or I might have added, to the Churchwarden’s.”
“And pray why did you go there, sir?” cried the Rector.
“Come, father, don’t talk to me as if I were a naughty little boy about to be sent to bed without his supper.”
“Pray be calm, dear,” cried Mrs Mallow. “Cyril gives a very good explanation. Surely it was natural that he should walk over to Kilby.”
“I say why did you go over there, sir?”
“To smoke a pipe with old Portlock, if you must know, and have a glass of his home brewed ale. It’s dull enough here with the girls.”
“It is false, sir,” cried the Rector, excitedly.
“Well,” said Cyril, coolly, “you may not find it dull, but I do.”
“I say, sir, it is false that you merely went there to drink and smoke.”
“Very well, father,” said Cyril, in the most nonchalant way, as he lay back in his chair and played with his mother’s rings. “Perhaps you know, then, why I went.”