The Squire's voice had sunk into a whisper, and the "Daily Liberal" shook like a leaf in the breeze.
"And the dear old guv, where is he? Why doesn't he come out as he always does? Hasn't any one told him I am here?"
"I tell you this is my room; it isn't much that belongs to me, except five sons doing nothing, and six unmarried daughters, but--but this room is my property, and I won't have any one in, I tell you--what a fool I was not to lock the door--eh, what? who's that, eh? Damn the looking-glass!"
There was a mirror over the fireplace, and the fireplace was opposite the door. It was too much for Sir Marcus; if the boy had shown the least sign of shame, of nervousness at meeting him, it would have been easier to keep up a semblance of anger; but, as usual, Jack's bluntness of vision saved him where finer instincts would have been his ruin.
"Hullo, father, here I am! All right, father? I say, isn't it awfully jolly to be together again, eh, father?"
The premier's speech on fruit-growing for the million fluttered down into the coal scuttle; and the Squire wiped his spectacles violently, and gave in to the fascination of the single man who never worked. And when Digby strolled in ten minutes later, he found the prodigal filling his father's pipe with Canadian tobacco, and telling him American anecdotes, while the little room resounded with their laughter.
"Come in, Digby, and listen to this fellow," said Sir Marcus, jovially; "did you ever know such a fellow as Jack? It's a pity _you_ don't try America, Digby, it would do you a world of good, man!"
Digby accepted the situation and his eviction with a laugh, not only because, as he had said to Lady Joan, he knew he would be received back into favor again on the morrow when the fascination of the prodigal would have exhausted itself for the time, but also from a lurking hope that he would at last have some chance of talking to their fair guest, whom the Squire had as yet entirely monopolized, in the way he usually monopolized any stranger who would lend a willing and fresh ear to his hobbies. But the musician did not get his chance that evening, though he tried very hard for it. Jack's return proved but a doubtful assistance to him: to begin with, it caused an alteration in the dinner-table, by which he found himself out of the range of her conversation; it also made the conversation in the drawing-room afterwards more hopelessly general than ever, for they all sat round in a circle and listened to the American anecdotes, and when the American anecdotes flagged for a moment Digby had to go to the piano and play the returned wanderer's favorite airs, while the hero himself took the opportunity of opening a desperate flirtation with Lady Joan under cover of the crashing chords of his eldest brother.