“We shall not need to trouble you for your advice.”
“But I shall most certainly give it.”
By this time Captain Oliphant’s self-control was rapidly evaporating. He was beginning to feel himself a little small, and that always annoyed him.
“Look here, Mr Frank Armstrong,” said he, leaning back in his chair, and trying hard to look superior, “it is just as well for you and me to understand one another. I have heard what sort of figure you cut at Oxford, and the disgrace in which you left the University. Allow me to say, sir, that it reflects little credit on your honour that you should have imposed on your late employer, and taken advantage of his weak health and faculties to foist yourself upon his family under false colours.”
“Will you oblige me with a light?” interposed Mr Armstrong.
“You are under a delusion if you think I am not perfectly well acquainted with your disreputable antecedents. Let me tell you, sir, that a music-hall cad is not a fitting companion for a lad of Roger’s rank and expectations.”
“I perfectly agree with you. But really this has very little to do with our arrangements for Roger’s future.”
“Do you mean to deny, sir, that you were a music-hall singer?”
“By no means. I was. On the whole, I rather enjoyed the vocation at the time. I look upon that and the year (about which you apparently have not been fortunate enough to learn anything) during which I was tutor and private secretary in the family of the Hon. James Welcher—the most notorious blackleg in the kingdom—as two of the most interesting episodes in my career.”
“I can believe it. And, before you devoted your energies to singing disreputable songs to the blackguards of the East End—”