The disinterested counsel of wise elder brothers is not always taken in the spirit it merits; and there is no trace of docile and unquestioning acquiescence in Byng's monosyllabic—
"Why?"
"Because, if you stay here, I think you will most likely get into mischief."
The young man's usually good-humoured eyes give out a blue spark that looks rather like fight.
"The same kind of mischief that you have been getting into during the past week?" he inquires slowly.
The acquaintance with his movements evidenced by this last sentence, no less than the light they throw upon his own motives, stagger Jim, to the extent of making him accept the sneer in total silence. Is not it a richly deserved one? But the sweet-natured Byng is already repenting it; and there is something conciliatory and almost entreating in the spirit of his last remark:
"I do not know what has happened to my mother," he says, lowering his voice; "there is no one less of a mauvaise langue than she, as you know; but in the case of——"—he breaks off and begins his sentence afresh; "she has been warning me against them again; I can't find that she has any reason to go upon; but she has taken a violent prejudice against her. She says that it is one of her instincts; and you—you have done nothing towards setting her right?"
Perhaps it may be that his young friend's reported metaphor of the "hippopotamus hide" has not served to render him any dearer to Jim; but there is certainly no great suavity in his reply:
"Why should I?—it is no concern of mine."
"No concern of yours to stand by and see an angel's white robe besmirched by the foul mire of slander?" cries Byng indignantly, and lapsing into that high-flown mood which never fails to make his more work-a-day companion "see blood."