with that young
bounder! He could not consult with June, because she had gone up that
morning in the train of Eric Cobbley and his lot. And his father was
still in 'that rotten Paris.' He felt that this was emphatically one of
those moments for which he had trained himself, assiduously, at school,
where he and a boy called Brent had frequently set fire to newspapers
and placed them in the centre of their studies to accustom them to
coolness in moments of danger. He did not feel at all cool waiting in
the stable-yard, idly stroking the dog Balthasar, who queasy as an old
fat monk, and sad in the absence of his master, turned up his face,
panting with gratitude for this attention. It was half an hour before
Holly came, flushed and ever so much prettier than she had any right to
look. He saw her look at him quickly--guiltily of course--then followed
her in, and, taking her arm, conducted her into what had been their
grandfather's study. The room, not much used now, was still vaguely
haunted for them both by a presence with which they associated
tenderness, large drooping white moustaches, the scent of cigar smoke,
and laughter. Here Jolly, in the prime of his youth, before he went to
school at all, had been wont to wrestle with his grandfather, who even
at eighty had an irresistible habit of crooking his leg. Here Holly,
perched on the arm of the great leather chair, had stroked hair curving
silvery over an ear into which she would whisper secrets. Through that
window they had all three sallied times without number to cricket on the
lawn, and a mysterious game called 'Wopsy-doozle,' not to be understood
by outsiders, which made old Jolyon very hot. Here once on a warm night
Holly had appeared in her 'nighty,' having had a bad dream, to have the
clutch of it released. And here Jolly, having begun the day badly by
introducing fizzy magnesia into Mademoiselle Beauce's new-laid egg, and
gone on to worse, had been sent down (in the absence of his father) to
the ensuing dialogue:

"Now, my boy, you mustn't go on like this."

"Well, she boxed my ears, Gran, so I only boxed hers, and then she boxed
mine again."

"Strike a lady? That'll never do! Have you begged her pardon?"

"Not yet."

"Then you must go and do it at once. Come along."

"But she began it, Gran; and she had two to my one."

"My dear, it was an outrageous thing to do."

"Well, she lost her temper; and I didn't lose mine."

"Come along."

"You come too,