"You always said it was God's judgment on Jessie and her descendants, Chiltern. But I kind of wish you'd been a little mite more forgiving."
"Who am I?" demanded Grismer, sullenly, "to thwart God's wrath ... m-m-m'yes, the anger of the Lord Almighty! And I never thought of that imbecile aunt.... It was divine will that punished my erring sister and her children, and her children's chil——"
"Rot!" remarked Oswald. "Cleland caught you napping and put one over. That's all that worries you. And now you are properly and piously sore!"
"That is an impious and wickedly outrageous way to talk to your father!" said Grismer, glaring at him. "You have come back from college lacking reverence and respect for everything you have been taught to consider sacred!—m-m-m'yes—everything! You have returned to us utterly demoralized, defiant, rebellious, changed! Every worldly abomination seems to attract you: you smoke openly in your mother's presence; your careless and loose conversation betrays your contempt for the simple, homely, and frugal atmosphere in which you have been reared by Christian parents. Doubtless we are not sufficiently stylish for you any longer!" he added sarcastically.
"I'm sorry I was disrespectful, governor——"
"No! You are not sorry!" retorted Grismer tartly. "You rejoice secretly in your defiance of your parents! You have been demoralized by the license permitted you by absence from home. You live irresponsibly; you fling away your money on theatres! You yourself admit that you have learned to dance. Nothing that your pastor has taught you, nothing that our church holds sacred seems capable of restraining you from wickedness. That is the truth, Oswald. And your mother and I despair of your future, here and——" he lifted his eyes solemnly—"above."
There was an awkward silence. Finally Oswald said with sullen frankness:
"You see I'm a man, now, and I've got to do my own thinking. Things I used to believe seem tommyrot to me now——"
"Oswald!" sighed his mother.
"I'm sorry to pain you, Mother, but they do! And about everything you object to I find agreeable. I'm not very bad, Mother. But this sort of talk inclines me to raise the devil. What's the harm in going to a show? In dancing? In smoking a cigar? For heaven's sake, let a fellow alone. The line of talk the governor hands me makes a cynic of a man who's got any brains."