“No, thank you; I would rather say what I have to say standing.”
“What is the matter?”
“The matter is, sir, that I find that by your attentions you have made that poor girl, Miss Fregelius, while she was a guest in my house, the object of slander and scandal to every ill-natured gossip in the three parishes.”
Morris’s quiet, thoughtful eyes flashed in an ominous and unusual manner.
“If you were not my father,” he said, “I should ask you to change your tone in speaking to me on such a subject; but as things are I suppose that I must submit to it, unless you choose otherwise.”
“The facts, Morris,” answered his father, “justify any language that I can use.”
“Did you get these facts from Stephen Layard and Miss Layard? Ah! I guessed as much. Well, the story is a lie; I was merely arranging her hood which she could not do herself, as the wind forced her to use her hand to hold her dress down.”
The thought of his own ingenuity in hitting on the right solution of the story mollified the Colonel not a little.
“Pshaw,” he said, “I knew that. Do you suppose that I believed you fool enough to kiss a girl on the open road when you had every opportunity of kissing her at home? I know, too, that you have never kissed her at all; or, ostensibly at any rate, done anything that you shouldn’t do.”
“What is my offence, then?” asked Morris.