“That! No! — if it was true!”
“Oh, I expect it was!” she said. “I thought, did not you? that he had been drinking what my brother Jack calls Old Tom.”
“I know of no reason why he must go to the village to do so.”
“Oh, no! I conjecture,” said Miss Morville, with the air of one versed in these matters, “that it was to see some cocking that he went.”
“Cocking!”
“At the Red Lion. To own the truth, that was what I thought he meant to do when he said he had the headache and would go to bed.”
“But, in God’s name, why could he not have told me so?”
“They never do,” she replied simply. “My brothers were just the same. In general, you know, one’s parents frown upon cocking, on account of the low company it takes a boy into. Depend upon it, that was why he would not tell you.”
“My dear ma’am, Martin can hardly regard me in the light of a parent!”
“No — at least, only in a disagreeable way,” she said. “You are so much older than he, and have so much more experience besides, that I daresay the poor boy feels you are a great distance removed from him. Moreover, he resents you very much at present. If I were you, I would not mention his having gone out tonight.”