“Where the very dickens have you been?” was the father’s greeting when they met at breakfast. “A pretty state we’ve been in!—upsetting the entire family—and me—and the business! You shall answer to me for this, young man. Why the devil don’t you pass that toast?”
“I’ve—I’ve only been a short trip, pater, off the island,” Basil replied, not greatly perturbed.
“I’ll short trip you!” the father said with beetling brows; and the tone in which he laconically said, “More,” as he thrust his coffee cup to Hilda was very fierce indeed, but he winked at her with just the corner of his left eye; Basil was on his other side. And presently Robert Gregory chuckled openly as he helped himself to marmalade. And when he was leaving the table he slapped his boy on the back, but not too roughly.
“Dead broke?” he demanded.
Basil was about to say, “No, indeed!” but he caught Ah Wong’s sudden eye, and said instead, “Well, yes, I’m afraid I am rather.”
Robert Gregory chuckled again. “I’ve a damned good notion to send you home in the steerage—jolly good idea; and while I’m thinking it over, you’d better mind your P’s and your little Q’s. Show up at the office about three, and I dare say I’ll be ass enough to find you a fiver.”
Hilda followed her father to the door. She always “saw him off.”
Ah Wong at the sideboard continued to select tit-bits for the tray she was going to carry to her mistress’s room. She intended, by fair means or by foul, to coax Florence Gregory to eat.
Basil pushed back his plate. He had been pretending to eat, but the food was revolting.
He was longing to see his mother, and he was dreading it. They had not spoken together yet.