“I’m all right,” he responded shortly. Conscious of his father’s gaze, he looked up, and met it squarely, his jaw hardening a little. Penhallow grinned at him, but whether in mockery, or in appreciation of his self-command, it would have been difficult to say.
Penhallow began to stir his tea, in a way which made Aubrey exchange a pained glance with Charmian. “I shall sit up to dinner,” he announced.
This piece of intelligence was greeted with such a marked lack of enthusiasm that Aubrey felt it incumbent on him to say: “How lovely for us, Father dear!”
“I don’t know which of you gives me the worst bellyache, you or Clay!” said Penhallow, with a look of disgust. “I don’t want you slobbering over me!” His fiery glance again swept the room; his lip curled. “A nice, affectionate lot of children I’ve got!” he said scathingly.
“One hates to criticise Father,” murmured Eugene in his sister’s ear, “but one cannot but feel that to be a most unreasonable remark.”
“Considering you mean to sit up to dinner tomorrow, you’d better be in bed today, I should have thought,” said Clara.
“You keep your thoughts to yourself, old lady!” retorted Penhallow. “I daresay there’s a lot of you would like to see me keep my bed, but you’re going to be disappointed. By God, I’ve let you get so out of hand, the whole pack of you, it’s time I showed you who’s master at Trevellin!” He stabbed a finger at his wife. “And that goes for you too!” he said unnecessarily. “Don’t think you’re going to take to your bed with a headache, or any other such tomfoolery, because you’re not! And as for you,” he added, directing the accusing finger at Charmian, “you can make what kind of a guy of yourself you please in London, but you won’t do it here! You let me see you in those trousers again, and I’ll lay my stick across your bottom!”
“Oh, no, you won’t!” said Charmian, with a look quite as fierce as his. “You’ve no sort of control over me, so don’t you think it! I’m not dependent on you! I shan’t burst into tears because you choose to shout at me! You’ll get as good as you give if you go for me!”
“Oh, don’t! Please don’t!” Faith gasped, shrinking back in her chair involuntarily.
Neither of the combatants paid the slightest heed to her. Battle was fairly joined, and had anyone wished to speak it would have been quite impossible to have done so above the thunder of Penhallow’s voice and the fury of Charmian’s more strident accents. Eugene, lounging on a sofa, lay laughing at them both; Clara went on drinking her tea in perfect unconcern; Clay found that his hand was trembling so much that he was obliged to set his cup-and-saucer down on the table beside him; and Conrad, entering the room when the quarrel was at its height, promptly encouraged his sister by calling out: “Loo in, Char! Loo in, good bitch!”