“Do you hear? Give me my cane.”
“And treat all my advances as if I were trying to trick and defraud them.”
“I say, give me my cane!” cried the old man.
“They flatly tell me that my plans are new-fangled and foolish, and that they’ll have none of them.”
“Confound you, you insolent puppy! Will you give me my cane?”
“They’re as hard to move as so many mules,” said Geoffrey, handing the cane, and smiling in the old man’s face.
Uncle Paul snatched the cane, and made a threatening gesture as if about to strike, when Geoffrey held out one hand, school-boy fashion, for a cut on the palm, and the old man made as if to give it a vicious blow; but, as the other did not flinch, he checked the fall of the cane, and sat showing his yellow teeth.
“I’m glad of it, very glad,” he snarled. “I told you so; and now you may pack up and be off, for I’m sick of you, and want to see your back.”
“But I’m not going,” said Geoffrey, coolly. “I wouldn’t move for the world. You do me so much good.”
“I do you good, puppy?”