“You’d have me believe so,” I muttered, vengefully.
He laughed, and made me a bow. “Nephew,” he said, “you’re here; you’ve caught the fancy of your grandfather; how long you’ll retain it I’ll not conjecture, knowing so little of you. He’ll have no hurt come to you at my hands; it is my habit to obey him,”—with a bitter sneer.
“Fearing him?” I ventured.
“As much as I fear any man,” he answered, carelessly. “It’s to my advantage to be dutiful; it is to the advantage of any man to be dutiful to a rich kinsman, as of the place-hunter to fawn upon a personage with star or ribbon. Tush, nephew, my practice is the practice of all wise men: to accept the fact, and shape myself to the fact, to seek advantage, and employ what wit I have for the attainment of it. I’m not prepared to love you, nephew; there is no need for that hypocrisy.”
“None!” I assented bitterly.
“But while my father lives,” he proceeded, “we’re to be inmates of this house. We’re to meet daily; to live our lives together; to appear in public together. It would be tedious to me that we should be for ever wrangling. Let us then be frank with each other,—hate each other, but let us not show our lack of breeding by impoliteness. John, while we’re together in this house, I am prepared to play dutiful kinsman, preceptor, friend. And you?”
For my very hate of him I could only seek to match my wit with his own. I answered, “And I, my dear uncle, am prepared to ape the part of dutiful nephew—to assume all the respect, affection, trust, I do not feel for you.”
He laughed; he rose from his chair. “We understand one another, nephew. I compliment you upon your breeding. Let us join the gentlemen.”
He took my arm with a gay show of cordiality; arm in arm we went down to dinner, as the bell was clanging through the house.