“Netty,” said Van Diemen, “has had the best instruction money could procure; and if she says you were satirical, you may depend on it you were.”
“Oh, in that case, of course!” Mr. Fellingham rejoined. “Who could help it?”
He thought himself warranted in giving the rein to his wicked satirical spirit, and talked lightly of the accidental character of the letter H in Tinman’s pronunciation; of how, like somebody else’s hat in a high wind, it descended on somebody else’s head, and of how his words walked about asking one another who they were and what they were doing, danced together madly, snapping their fingers at signification; and so forth. He was flippant.
Annette glanced at her father, and dropped her eyelids.
Mr. Fellingham perceived that he was enjoined to be on his guard.
He went one step farther in his fun; upon which Van Diemen said, with a frown, “If you please!”
Nothing could withstand that.
“Hang old Mart Tinman’s wine!” Van Diemen burst out in the dead pause. “My head’s a bullet. I’m in a shocking bad temper. I can hardly see. I’m bilious.”
Mr. Fellingham counselled his lying down for an hour, and he went grumbling, complaining of Mart Tinman’s incredulity about the towering beauty of a place in Australia called Gippsland.
Annette confided to Mr. Fellingham, as soon as they were alone, the chivalrous nature of her father in his friendships, and his indisposition to hear a satirical remark upon his old schoolmate, the moment he understood it to be satire.