“My watch is like myself,” said the Squire, “girning,” as the Scotch say—“plain, but steady-going. At any rate, it gives the law in my house. The King may go by the Horse Guards if he likes.”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Osborne, really anxious to keep the peace, “I went by my watch, which is certainly right by London time; and I’d no idea you were waiting for me; otherwise I could have dressed much quicker.”

“I should think so,” said the Squire, looking sarcastically at his son’s attire. “When I was a young man, I should have been ashamed to have spent as much time at my looking-glass as if I’d been a girl. I could make myself as smart as any one when I was going to a dance, or to a party where I was likely to meet pretty girls; but I should have laughed myself to scorn if I’d stood fiddle-faddling at a glass, smirking at my own likeness, all for my own pleasure.”

Osborne reddened, and was on the point of letting fly some caustic remark on his father’s dress at the present moment; but he contented himself with saying, in a low voice—

“My mother always expected us all to dress for dinner. I got into the habit of doing it to please her, and I keep it up now.” Indeed, he had a certain kind of feeling of loyalty to her memory, in keeping up all the little domestic habits and customs she had instituted or preferred. But the contrast which the Squire thought was implied by Osborne’s remark, put him beside himself.

“And I, too, try to attend to her wishes. I do; and in more important things. I did, when she was alive; and I do so now.”

“I never said you did not,” said Osborne, astonished at his father’s passionate words and manner.

“Yes, you did, sir. You meant it. I could see by your looks. I saw you look at my morning-coat. At any rate, I never neglected any wish of hers in her lifetime. If she’ wished me to go to school again and learn my A, B, C, I would. By—I would; and I wouldn’t have gone playing and lounging away my time, for fear of vexing and disappointing her. Yet some folks older than school-boys—”

The Squire choked here; but, though the words would not come, his passion did not diminish. “I’ll not have you casting up your mother’s wishes to me, sir. You, who went near to break her heart at last!”

Osborne was strongly tempted to get up and leave the room. Perhaps it would have been better if he had; it might then have brought about an explanation, and a reconciliation, between father and son. But he thought he did well in sitting still and appearing to take no notice. This indifference to what he was saying appeared to annoy the Squire still more; and he kept on grumbling and talking to himself, till Osborne, unable to bear it any longer, said, very quietly, but very bitterly—

“I am only a cause of irritation to you, and home is no longer home to me, but a place in which I am to be controlled in trifles, and scolded about trifles as if I were a child. Put me in a way of making a living for myself—that much your oldest son has a right to ask of you—I will then leave this house, and you shall be no longer vexed by my dress, or my want of punctuality.”

“You make your request pretty much as another son did long ago: ‘Give me the portion that falleth to me.’ But I don’t think what he did with his money is much encouragement for me to—” Then the thought of how little he could give his son his “portion,” or any part of it, stopped the Squire.

Osborne took up the speech.

“I’m as ready as any man to earn my living; only the preparation for any profession will cost money, and money I haven’t got.”

“No more have I,” said the Squire shortly.