“Oh, Jack!” she murmured, brokenly. “It is hard! You need not go really!—it is your own choice!—and I—I am so lonely!”
CHAPTER IX
THAT same evening the Philosopher took it into his head to be uncommonly disagreeable and ill-mannered. He found fault with everything, even with his dinner (which he had neither provided nor paid for) and he was judicially severe on his host for allowing himself to be “done,” as he put it, by his tradesmen.
“Call this mutton!” he said, viciously chopping at the meat on his plate. “It’s leather!—and old leather too! No wonder you’ve got the gout!—you’re eating gout now! You’ve got a cook, I suppose, and she ought to be ashamed of herself for taking such mutton into the house—she doesn’t know her business—”
The Sentimentalist interrupted him. Her cheeks were flushed with indignation and embarrassment.
“I am the one to blame,” she said, coldly. “I am alone responsible for the housekeeping. One cannot always command perfection. But please do not irritate Dad—he is easily upset—”
“Upset? I should think so!” snorted the Philosopher. “He’s got to pay for this beastly mutton!”
For one flashing second the blue eyes of his hostess swept over him in a glance of immeasurable scorn. Then she rose from table and left the room. Outside the door she met the parlourmaid.
“Well, I never, Miss!” observed that young woman. “If your Pa were in his ’e’lth he ought to order that old curmudgeon out of the house! Call ’im a friend! The cheek of ’im!”
The Sentimentalist could not answer. As mistress of the house she smarted under the rudeness this “clever” man had inflicted upon her at her own table. If the mutton was tough, she felt that he considered the fault to be hers, though she, poor little woman, was neither the butcher nor the cook. Moreover, the bad manners displayed in finding fault with the food provided at a hospitable board on which he had “sponged” for weeks together, proved, to her regret that though he might be a distinguished University “light of learning,” he was not a gentleman. This reflection calmed the hurry of her nerves—she re-entered the dining-room and resumed her place, ignoring the quizzical and enquiring look of the Philosopher as she did so.