“You can’t stop courting,” laughed Geoffrey. “It would take a giant.”
“None of your confounded banter, sir. I told you I’d have no courting—no taking notice of that jade—and you’ve disobeyed me.”
“Not I,” said Geoffrey.
“Don’t contradict, puppy. I say you have.”
“All right.”
“The jade’s going about the house red-eyed, and pale, and love-sick—confound her!—about you, and now you make her miserable by playing off that brown-skinned fish-wench with the dark eyes.”
Geoffrey’s conscience smote him as he thought of that day when he playfully kissed Madge, and asked himself whether she really cared for him now, but only to feel sure that she did not.
“Does this sort of thing please you?” he said.
“Confound you! No, sir, it does not. Act like a man if you can, and be honest, or—confound you, sir!—old as I am, and old-fashioned as I am—damme, sir—laws or no laws, I’ll call you out and shoot you. You sha’n’t trifle with the girl’s feelings while I’m here.”
Geoffrey’s first impulse was to say something banteringly; but he saw that the old man was so much in earnest that he took a quiet tone.