Pate shied the matches at him, and Tom sat at the piano and picked out a tune with one hand.
“Stop it!” cried Walter.
“On terms,” said Tom.
“I hate you,” said Walter. “Come away.”
“The terms are the Meistersinger,” said Tom.
“On a piano! You’re a Goth.”
“No. I’m paying you a compliment you deserve. Get at it.”
Walter got.
Young Rupert in his Slough of Despond had been too busy with himself to wonder why Sir Philip had corrected him when he described Tom Bradshaw as a “beast.”
At his mother’s knee, Tom, like all the Bradshaws of the seed of John, had lisped, “’A ’ate th’ ’epplestalls,” and, when he was a little older, had learned that he hated them “Because they’re dirty thieves. Because yon mills o’ theirn are ourn by rights.” This was not socialism and had nothing to do with the doctrine that all property is theft; it was the family superstition of the Bradshaws, and they believed it as the first article of their faith.