"I don't quite see, under the circumstances, how you can separate them," pursued the obstinate Hugh. "I should like to turn off, just for a moment to the sister, and consider her."
"Go ahead," said Mr. Pomfret in a somewhat sullen tone. He was keeping his impulsive and fiery nature under control, out of his great respect for his friend. But it was very doubtful if he would stand much criticism even from one so respected.
"I have not a word to say against her appearance or her manners. I will go further, and say there is not a girl in Blankfield, or for the matter of that in the 'county' itself, who gives the impression of a thorough gentlewoman more convincingly than she does." Pomfret's face brightened at these words. "Oh, then you admit that, and you have knocked about the world a few years longer than I have. I am of the same opinion, but if you say it, it must be so."
"I do say it unhesitatingly, but mind you, I am only judging from outside appearances. Now, how comes it that such a refined and ladylike girl as that should have such a bounder of a brother? There is a mystery there."
Jack Pomfret prepared to argue. "I don't quite agree that he is a bounder, he is not quite boisterous enough for that. Let us agree on a common definition—namely, that he is bad form. That fits him, I think."
"And the sister is very good form. You can't deny that there is a mystery."
But the young subaltern developed a quite surprising ingenuity in argument.
"She just simply calls him her brother," sharply, "but she has told you he is her halfbrother by a first marriage—father a gentleman, mother a common person, hence the bad form. A second time, the father married a woman of his own class, hence Norah Burton. Norah knows him for a good sort, if a bit rough, and sticks to him. That's a reasonable theory, anyway."
"More ingenious than reasonable perhaps," commented Murchison with an amused smile.
Pomfret went on, warming to his subject. "And, hang it all, if we speak of bounders—and mind you, I won't admit he is a bounder in the strict sense of the term—is there a family in England without them?"