When Anthony came home, he found that his father had been waiting supper a while for him, and then as he did not arrive, had ordered it in, and partaken of the meal.
The old man's humour was not pleasant. He had been over that afternoon to Kilworthy, and had heard of his son's act of recklessness. Fears were entertained for Fox's sight in one eye. He was ordered to have the eye bandaged, and to be kept in the dark.
When Anthony entered the room where was his father, the old man looked up at him from the table strewn with the remains of his meal, and said, roughly, "I expect regular hours kept in my house. Why were you not here at the proper time? About any new folly or violence?"
Anthony did not answer, but seated himself at the table.
"I have been to Kilworthy," said the old man, "I have heard there of your conduct."
"Fox insulted me. You would not have me endure an insult tamely?" His father's tone nettled the young man.
"Certainly not; but men pink each other with rapiers, instead of striking with lace tags."
"That is the first time any one has let fall that I am not a man," said Anthony.
There was always a certain roughness, a lack of amiability in the behaviour of father to son and son to father, not arising out of lack of affection, but that the old man was by nature coarse-grained, and he delighted in seeing his son blunt and brusque. He—young Tony—was no milk-sop, he was proud to say. He was a lad who could hold his own against any one, and fight his way through the world. The old man was gratified at the swagger and independence of the youth, and at every proof he gave of rude and over-bearing self-esteem. But he was not pleased at the brawl with Fox Crymes; it was undignified for one thing, and it caused a breach where he wished to see union. It threw an impediment in the way of the execution of a darling scheme, a scheme on which his heart had been set for twenty years.