Without a word, Paul began to gather together his few brushes and tubes of paint, but when he started to leave the room with his picture, Mr. Lambert stopped him peremptorily.
“Leave those things just where they were, please.” Paul did as he was told.
“You’ll throw them out, uncle?”
“Kindly learn to obey without asking questions!”
All that day, Jane had seen her cousin gay, full of good spirits, utterly unlike the moody, disagreeable boy that he had been for so long; but now the old, hard, obdurate expression came into his face.
“These things are mine, uncle,” he said, quietly.
“Indeed? The top of that flour barrel?” inquired Mr. Lambert, pointing to the picture. Paul hesitated for a moment, and then with a slight shrug, put it down again on the chair.
“No, that is yours,” he said, and walked out of the room.
Mr. Lambert took the picture, looked at it for a moment or two, as if uncertain whether it too, were guilty of some heinous crime against his rule; then, he took it; but instead of breaking it in two, placed it quite carefully behind his desk.
Paul did not appear at supper; but Mr. Lambert preferred not to notice his absence. Everyone was aware that civil war was brewing in the household, and with varying degrees of curiosity or anxiety, made their private conjectures as to what the future would develop in the way of open hostilities or amicable compromise between uncle and nephew.