“I suppose you were never a young man yourself, sir.”
“Oh, yes, I was, my boy,” and the corners of Mr. Mayne’s mouth relaxed in spite of his efforts to keep serious. “I fell in love with your mother, and stuck to her for seven or eight 25 years; but I did not make believe that I was brother to a lot of pretty girls, and waste all my time dancing attendance on them and running about on their errands.”
“You ought to have taken a lesson out of my book,” returned his son, readily.
“No, I ought to have done no such thing, sir!” shouted back Mr. Mayne, waxing irate again. It could not be denied that Dick could be excessively provoking when he liked. “Don’t I tell you it is time this sort of thing was stopped? Why, people will begin to talk, and say you are making up to one of them, it is not right, Dick; it is not, indeed,” with an attempted pathos.
“I don’t care that for what people say,” returned the young fellow, snapping his fingers. “Is it not a pity you are saying all this to me just when I am going away and am not likely to see any of them for the next six months? You are very hard on me to-night, father; and I can’t think what it is all about.”
Mr. Mayne was silent a moment, revolving his son’s pathetic speech. It was true he had been cross, and had said more than he had meant to say. He had not wished to hinder Dick’s innocent enjoyments; but if he were unknowingly picking flowers at the edge of a precipice, was it not his duty as a father to warn him?
“I think I have been a little hard, my lad,” he said, candidly, “but there, you and your mother know my bark is worse than my bite. I only wanted to warn you; that’s all, Dick.”
“Warn me!—against what, sir?” asked the young man, quickly.
“Against falling in love, really, with one of the Challoner girls!” returned Mr. Mayne, trying to evade the fire of Dick’s eyes, and blustering a little in consequence. “Why, they have not a penny, one of them, and, if report be true, Mrs. Challoner’s money is very shakily invested. Paine told me so the other day. He said he should never wonder if a sudden crash came any minute.”
“Is this true, Richard?”