‘Phil, Phil,’ he shouted; he could stand his own thoughts no longer.
It is always a difficult matter to retract one’s words. But it was a characteristic of Richard Meadowes that he could generally extricate himself from any difficult situation with grace and composure.
It was, he admitted, quite unsuitable that, after having fairly warned Phil of the results of his disobedience, he should now retract all he had just said; but it must be done. Phil must stay with him at any cost.
So, putting the best face he could to it, he called and called again for Philip, who at last appeared: he had quite expected the summons.
‘I suppose he desires to forget all that has just passed,’ thought Phil, well aware of the sway he held over his father’s affections.
‘I think you called me, sir?’ he said. He wore a very demure aspect.
‘Yes; I wished to explain this matter further, Phil: ’twas perhaps scarcely fair in me not to give you a reason for my displeasure. Let us walk on and I shall tell you all.’
But it would, alas, have been as impossible for the Richard Meadowes of now-a-days to tell all the truth about any subject as it would be for a crab to discontinue the sidelong gait which is its inheritance; so he cut out one half of the story and padded up the other half, and summed up the whole in one easy sentence: ‘ ’Twas, in fact, jealousy on Shepley’s part caused our quarrel,’ he said—a half-truth which altered the facts of the case a little.
‘Who was the woman?’ asked Philip bluntly. ‘I suppose she was my mother?’
‘Yes, Anne Champion by name,’ Meadowes said, but hurried on before Phil had time to question him further. ‘So you can see, Philip, that I have reason on my side when I bid you have no more to do with Miss Caroline Shepley.’