Page:The Reverberator (2nd edition, American issue, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1888).djvu/129

Rh "Yes, and of yours. But it will be all right." The young man flattered himself that that was as far as he was willing to go, in the way of bribery.

"Well, it's your affair—or your sisters'," his father returned. "It's their idea that it will be all right."

"I should think they would be weary of chattering!" Gaston exclaimed, impatiently.

Mr. Probert looked at him a moment with a vague surprise, but he only said, "I think they are. But the period of discussion is over. We have taken the jump." He added, in a moment, as if from the desire to say something more conciliatory: "Alphonse and Maxime are quite of your opinion."

"Of my opinion?"

"That she is charming."

"Confound them, then, I'm not of theirs!" The form of this rejoinder was childishly perverse, and it made Mr. Probert stare again; but it belonged to one of the reasons for which his children regarded him as an old darling that Gaston could feel after an instant that he comprehended it. The old man said nothing, but took up his book, and his son, who had been standing before the fire, went out of the room. His abstention from protest at Gaston's petulance was the more commendable as he was capable, for his part, of thinking it important that ces messieurs should like the little girl at the hotel. Gaston was not, and it would