“What has Mr. Lionel got to do with you, Ben? I’ve let you have your way about Prudence. B’ Jove! I’ll take no more of this from any one out of my family.”
“You are proud of your family, Sir Geoffrey, and so am I. I’ve a natural right to speak plainly to you.”
Fishpingle hesitated; he stretched out his hands.
“I want to go fishing and rabbiting with Mr. Lionel’s children.”
“Tchah! So you shall—so you shall. Dammy, don’t I know that you’re proud of the family; and it shouldn’t be difficult for you to own up that you’ve treated the head of its shabbily. Here, now—there!”
He smiled again, seeing Fishpingle as a boy. A ferret carried by the Squire in his coat pocket had bitten him in the throat. Ben had pulled the beast off. Lady Alicia had ordered that coat to be burnt, because the polecat scent offended her aristocratic nose. What jolly days those were, to be sure!
“Yes—I’ve been wrong,” murmured Fishpingle.
“I should have told you long ago, and gone away.”
“Gone away? Is the man daft? Told me—what?”
“Things you have never guessed. Will you sit down at your desk, Sir Geoffrey?”
The Squire stared at him, amused rather than angry.
“Upon my word,” he said, “this is beginning to look like a case for a doctor. You ask me to sit down in my own room. Very well!”
He moved to a chair which faced the desk, and sat down.
“Pardon me, Sir Geoffrey, I asked you to sit at your desk.”
“Um! You are evidently not quite in your right mind, Ben. However——”
He crossed to the desk and sat down, staring at Fishpingle, who, to his amazement, took his place on the hearthrug.
“Does anything strike you, Sir Geoffrey? God knows that I want the light to come to you not too suddenly.”
“Please look at Sir Rupert’s portrait, and then at me.”
Sir Geoffrey did so, and was none the wiser. He said as much. Fishpingle said quietly:
“My father’s son—you. It’s a wicked lie.”
Sir Geoffrey glared first at Fishpingle and then at the picture. He said irresolutely:
“No, no—it can’t be. And yet—and yet, there _is_ a look. My father’s—son?”
“Is there evidence to support this—a—affirmation?”
Fishpingle put his hand into his pocket and produced a bundle of letters.
He moved to the desk and handed them to the Squire, continuing in the same quiet voice: