"Do you fear he will get any harm in it?" quietly asked George.
"I think it would be better that he should stay away. Is the Hold not sufficient for him to spend his evenings in, but he must seek amusement elsewhere? I shall be obliged to you not to encourage his visits."
"Mr. Chattaway," said George, his face full of earnestness, "it appears to me that you are labouring under some mistake, or you would certainly not speak to me as you are now doing. I do not encourage Rupert to my mother's house, in one sense of the word; I never press for his visits. When he does come, I show myself happy to see him and make him welcome—as I should do by any other visitor. Common courtesy demands this of me."
"You do press for his visits," said Mr. Chattaway.
"I do not," firmly repeated George. "Shall I tell you why I do not? I have no wish but to be open in the matter. An impression has seated itself in my mind that his visits to our house displease you, and therefore I have not encouraged them."
Perhaps Mr. Chattaway was rather taken back by this answer. At any rate, he made no reply to it.
"But to receive him courteously when he does come, I cannot help doing," continued George. "I shall do it still. If Trevlyn Farm is to be a forbidden house to Rupert, it is not from our side the veto shall come. As long as Rupert pays us these visits of friendship—and what harm you can think they do him, or why he should not pay them, I am unable to conceive—so long he will be met with a welcome."
"Do you say this to oppose me?"
"Far from it. If you look at the case in an unprejudiced light, you may see that I speak in accordance with the commonest usages of civility. To close the doors of our house to Rupert when there exists no reason why they should be closed—and most certainly he has given us none—would be an act we might blush to be guilty of."
"You have been opposing me all the later years of your life. From that time when I wished to place you with Wall and Barnes, you have done nothing but act in opposition to me."