“Good morning, Harry. I hear that you were a surprisingly early visitor this morning; but you keep early hours in the country. I hope there is nothing amiss at the White House.”
Mr. Joscelyn held out a hand, of which he was rather proud to be shaken by his grand-nephew. It was, he flattered himself, a hand that was in itself a guarantee of blue blood. Harry embraced it in the grasp of a powerful member with none of these qualities, and gave it a squeeze much more energetic than he had intended.
“There is a good deal amiss with me,” he said. Harry had been debating the point with himself for the last half-hour, whether he should fully confide in his uncle or not. He could not but feel that it would be wiser to deal lightly with the fact of his exclusion from his father’s house; but he was so angry that he could not be prudent, and the moment that he had an opportunity of speech his temper broke out.
“I was not in bed all last night,” he said; “I was on the road like a tramp, Uncle Henry. My father turned me out of the house--”
Three lines came across Mr. Henry Joscelyn’s brow--three horizontal, well-marked lines. These were two too many. When he was sympathetic a slight indentation over his eyebrows was all that appeared. The second meant doubt, the third annoyance.
“Dear me!” he said, “how did that happen? I fear you must have been doing something to displease your father.”
“Who can help displeasing my father?” cried Harry. “I am sure, Uncle Henry, you know him well enough. I had been doing nothing wrong. I had been trying to get him to interest himself in my affairs. He has never done anything for me, it is you that have done everything for me. I laid before him a chance I’ve got. I meant at any rate to come and talk it all over with you; but in the first place I thought it was as well to ask a question about my mother’s money--”
“Ah--that was not quite an ingratiating way of opening the matter, I fear,” Uncle Henry said.
“Why not?” cried Harry, forgetting all the prudential rules he had been trying to impose upon himself. “My mother was willing, and when it would have advanced my interests--and of course I should have paid as good a per-centage as anybody else. Surety if there is anything a man can have a claim upon,” he added, argumentatively, “it must be his mother’s money. I mayn’t have any right to touch the family property, as I am only a younger son, and all that--and especially as there are such a lot of us; but my mother’s money--when it is doing nothing, only lying at interest. Surely a man has a claim upon that.”