Falk smiled, one of those confident, superior smiles that are so justly irritating to any parent.
"Oh, come, father," he said. "Aren't you rather exaggerating?"
"Exaggerating? Yes, of course you would take the other side. And what do you know about it? There you are, lolling about in your chair, idling week after week, until all the town talks about it----"
Falk sprang up.
"And whose fault is it if I do idle? What have I been wanting except to go off and make a decent living? Whose fault----?"
"Oh, mine, of course!" the Archdeacon shouted. "Put it all down to me! Say that I begged you to leave Oxford, that I want you to laze the rest of your life away. Why shouldn't you, when you have a mother and sister to support you?"
"Stop that, father." Falk also was shouting. "You'd better look out what you're saying, or I'll take you at your word and leave you altogether."
"You can, for all I care," the Archdeacon shouted back. They stood there facing one another, both of them red in the face, a curious family likeness suddenly apparent between them.
"Well, I will then," Falk cried, and rushed from the room, banging the door behind him.