"Geoff!" exclaimed his sisters, unwisely, perhaps.
He turned upon them.
"I've not come to have you preaching at me. Mamma, will you speak to them?" he burst out. "I hate this life—nothing but fault-finding as soon as I show my face. I wish I were out of it, I do! I'd rather be the poorest ploughboy in the country than lead this miserable life in this hateful London."
He said the last words loudly, almost shouting them, indeed. To do him justice, it was not often his temper got so completely the better of him. The noise he was making had prevented him and the others from hearing the bell ring—prevented them, too, from hearing, a moment or two later, a short colloquy on the stairs between Harvey and a new-comer.
"Thank you," said the latter; "I don't want you to announce me. I'll do it myself."
Geoff had left the door open.
"Yes," he was just repeating, even more loudly than before, "I hate this life, I do. I am grinding at lessons from morning to night, and when I come home this is the way you treat me. I——"
But a voice behind him made him start.
"Hoot-toot, young man," it said. "Hoot-toot, hoot-toot! Come, I say, this sort of thing will never do. And ladies present! Hoot——"
But the "toot" was drowned in a scream from Mrs. Tudor.