"I say, mamma, what's this about your taking Mrs. Peter's tickets?"
He threw his trencher on the table, as he burst in upon them with the question, and his usually refined face was in a very unrefined glow of heat. The interruption was most unwelcome. Mrs. Arkell would have put him down at once, but that she knew, from past experience, Travice had an inconvenient knack of not allowing himself to be put down. So she made a merit of necessity, and told how Mr. Arkell had interdicted their buying tickets.
"Well, of all the cool things ever done, that was about the coolest—for you to go and get those tickets from Mrs. Peter!" he said, when he had heard her to an end. "They don't have so many opportunities of going out, that you should deprive them of this one. I'd have stopped away from concerts for ever before I had done it."
"You be quiet, Travice," struck in Charlotte; "it is no business of yours."
"You be quiet," retorted Travice. "And it is my business, because I choose to make it mine. Mother, just one question: Will you let Lucy go with you to the concert? Mrs. Peter fears she shall be too ill to go. I'm sure I don't wonder if she is," he continued, with a spice of impertinence; "I should be, if I had had such a shabby trick played upon me."
"It is like your impudence to ask it, Travice. When do I take out Lucy Arkell? She is not going to the concert."
"She is going to the concert," returned Travice, that decision in his tone, that incipient rebellion, that his mother so much disliked. "You have deprived them of their tickets, and I shall, therefore, buy them two in place of them. And when my father asks me why I spent money on the concert against his wish, I shall just lay the whole case before him, and he will see that there was no help for it. I shall go and tell him now, before I——"
"You will do no such thing, Travice," interrupted Mrs. Arkell, her face in a flame. "I forbid you to carry the tale to your father. Do you hear me? I forbid you;—and I am your mother. How dare you talk of spending your money on this concert? Buy two tickets, indeed!"
The first was a mandate that Travice would not break; the latter he conveniently ignored. Flinging his trencher on his head, he went straight off to buy the tickets, and carried them to Mrs. Peter Arkell's. There was not much questioning as to how he obtained them, for Mrs. St. John was sitting there. That they were fresh tickets might be seen by the numbers.
"My dear Travice," cried Mrs. Peter, "it is kind of you to bring these tickets; but we cannot use them. I shall be unable to go; and there is no one to take Lucy."