"Why did I tell them?" exclaimed Colonel Ferrers. "Harry Monmouth! I told them, you young noodle, because I chose to tell them, and because it was the truth, and a mighty lucky thing for you, too. What with your poor mother's dying young, and your father's astonishing and supernatural wrong-headedness, you have had no bringing up whatever, my poor fellow! Talk of your going to college next year! why, you don't know how to make a bow. I present you to two charming women, and you double yourself up as if you had been run through the body, and then stumble over your own legs and tumble over everything else. Shade of Chesterfield! How am I to take you about, if this is the way you behave?"
"It was dark," said poor Jack. "And—and I don't want to be taken about, uncle, thank you. Can't I just keep quiet while I am here, and not see people? I don't know how to talk, really I don't."
"Pooh! pooh! sir," roared the Colonel, smiting the earth with his stick. "Have the goodness to hold your tongue! You know how to talk nonsense, and I request you'll not do it to me. You are my brother's son, sir, and I shall make it my business to teach you to walk, and to talk, and to behave like a rational Christian, while you are under my roof. If your father had the smallest atom of common sense in his composition—"
"Please don't say anything against father, Uncle Tom," cried the lad. "I can't stand that!" and one felt in the dark the fiery flush that made his cheeks tingle.
"Upon my soul!" cried Colonel Ferrers (who did not seem in the least angry), "you are the most astounding young rascal it has ever been my good fortune to meet. Are you aware, sir, that your father is my brother? that I first made the acquaintance of Raymond Ferrers when he was one hour old, a squeaking little scarlet wretch in a flannel blanket? Are you aware of this, pray?"
"I suppose I am," answered the lad. "But that doesn't make any difference. Nobody body must say anything against him, even if it is his own brother."
"Who is saying anything against him?" demanded Colonel Ferrers, fiercely. "He is an angel, sir; every idiot knows that. A combination of angel and infant, Raymond Ferrers is, and always has been. But the combination does not qualify him for bringing up children. Probatum est! Here we are! Now let me see if you can open the gate without fumbling, sir. If there is one thing I cannot endure, it is fumbling."
Thus adjured, Jack Ferrers opened the heavy wooden gate, and the two passed through a garden which seemed, from the fragrance, to be full of roses. The old house frowned dark and gloomy, with only one light twinkling feebly in a lower window. When they had entered, and were standing in the pleasant library, book-lined from floor to ceiling, Colonel Ferrers turned suddenly to his nephew, who was in a brown study, and dealt him a blow on the shoulder which sent him staggering half-way across the room, unexpected as it was.
"You're right to stand up for your father, my lad," he said, with gruff heartiness. "It was unnecessary in this case, for I would be cut into inch pieces and served up on toast if it would do my brother Raymond any good; but you are right all the same. If anybody else ever says he hasn't common sense, knock him down, do you hear? A blow from the shoulder, sir! that's the proper answer."
"Yes, uncle," said the boy demurely; but he looked up with a twinkle in his eye. "It's lucky for me that I don't have to knock you down, sir," he added. "You're awfully strong, aren't you? I wish I were!"