Glynne Day was seated one afternoon in her conservatory, bending over her last water-colour sketch by the open window, when a loud, reverberating bang echoed along the corridor, making the windows rattle outside her room. Starting up, knowing from old experience that it was only an earthquake, one of the social kind which affected Brackley from time to time, she hurried into her little study, and out into the passage, to go to the end, and tap sharply at the door facing her.
“Come in,” was shouted in the same tones as he who uttered the order had cried “wheel into line!” and Glynne entered to find the major with his hair looking knotted, his moustache bristling, and his eyes rolling in their sockets.
“What is the matter, uncle?”
“Matter?” cried the major, who was purple with rage. “Matter? He’s your father, Glynne, and he’s my brother, but if—if I could only feel that it wasn’t wicked to cut him down with the sword I used at Chillianwallah, I’d be thankful.”
“Now, uncle, dear, you don’t feel anything of the kind,” said Glynne, leaning upon the old gentleman’s arm.
“I do feel it, and I mean it this time. Now, girl, look here! Why am I such an old idiot—”
“Oh, uncle!”
”—As to stop here, and let that bullying, farm-labouring, overbearing bumpkin—I beg your pardon, my dear, but he is—father of yours, ride rough-shod over me?”
“But, uncle, dear—”
“But, niece, dear, he does; and how I can be such an idiot as to stop here, I don’t know. If I were his dependent, it couldn’t be worse.”