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“Look here!” he said; “I don’t permit you to bully your sister. What’s she done to you? She has always stood up for you a deal more than you deserve. If I let you come here at all, it was because she insisted upon it. I never could see what was the use of it, for my part.”

Tom’s rage had been subdued in a moment. He was supposed to be a being of small will, unable to restrain himself; but he was capable of an effort of the will when it was necessary, as most people are. He looked at his father with a piteous desire to conciliate and touch his heart. “I thought,” he said, “papa,—I hope you’ll forgive me,—that I had a right to come here.”

“Don’t call me papa, sir. I like her to do it, since others do it; but when do you ever find a man with such a word in his mouth? Not that I have to learn for the first time to-day that you are no man, and nothing manlike is to be expected from you. No, I don’t see what right you have here. If it had been your great-grandfather’s house, as many people think, you might have had a certain right; but it’s my house, bought with my money—and I have washed my hands of you.” He had been a little vehement at first, but now was perfectly calm, delivering his sentences with his hands in his pockets, looking down contemptuously upon his son.