“Puck found it handier to commence With a certain share of impudence; Which passes one off as learned and clever, Beyond all other degrees whatever.” —Song of Old Puck.
Judge Lawless was in a rage! If you have ever seen an angry lion, an enraged bear, or a young lady with “her mantle pinned awry,” you may conceive in some measure the state of mind in which that gentlemen trod up and down his library floor, while he listened to Ranty’s account of Pet’s exploit of the previous night.
Judge Lawless was a man of forty or so, and had been a widower for five years. His face was not particularly prepossessing though extremely handsome; his haughty, supercilious expression; his cold and somewhat sinister eyes, and slightly sensual mouth, were, on the whole, rather repelling. He prided himself, as a general thing, on his gentlemanly urbanity; but on the present occasion he quite forgot all his customary politeness, and paced up and down in a towering passion.
His son and heir, Master Ranty, had ensconced himself in a velvet-cushioned easy-chair; and with his feet on a stool, and both hands stuck in his coat-pockets, took things very coolly indeed.
“To think that my daughter should act in such an outrageous manner!” exclaimed the judge, passionately; “making herself a town’s talk, with her mad actions. What other young lady in her station of life would associate familiarly with those people at Dismal Hollow, who are a low set as far as I understand; or ride through those infested woods after night? I shall put an immediate stop to it, if I have to lock her up in the attic on bread and water. I have a good mind to keep her on bread and water for a month or so, and see if that will not cool the fever in her blood! And you, sir,” he added, stopping in his excited walk, and turning furiously upon Ranty, “deserve a sound thrashing for playing such a trick upon your sister. It would have served that young puppy Germaine right if she had put an end to his worthless life. I never liked that boy, and I command you instantly to cease your intimacy with him. If your uncle chooses to make a fool of himself, adopting every beggar’s brat for a protégé, that’s no reason why I should follow his lead. Now, sir, let me hear no more of this. As the son of Judge Lawless, you should look for better companionship than the grandson of an old gipsy.”
“I don’t know where I’d find one, then,” said Ranty, sturdily. “There isn’t a boy from Maine to Louisiana a better fellow than Ray Germaine. He can beat me at everything he lays his hands to, from mathematics down to pulling a stroke-oar; and there wasn’t another boy at school he couldn’t knock into a cocked hat.”
And with this spirited declaration, Master Ranty thrust his hands deeper into his pockets, and planted his feet more firmly than ever on the stool.
“How often must I tell you, sir,” vociferated his father, in a voice of thunder, “to drop this vulgar habit you have got of talking slang? I presume your accomplished friend, Germaine, has taught you that, as well as your manifold other acquirements,” he added, with a sneer.
“No, he didn’t,” said Ranty, stoutly; “and he could knock them into a cocked hat, if not further, too! Ray Germaine’s a tiptop fellow, and I shouldn’t wonder if he’d be a President some day. It will be the country’s loss if he ain’t—that’s all.”
“Silence, sir!” thundered the judge. “How dare you have the brazen effrontery to speak in this manner to me? You have improved under your sister’s tuition rapidly, since you came home! Go immediately to old Barrens Cottage, and bring Petronilla here. I shall see that she does not go there again in a hurry.”