Down, Fido, down! I
wonder they allow you to keep such noisy creatures--but stay! I was
forgetting you keep a piano. After that, I suppose, nothing matters."

Lancelot made no reply, but surprised Beethoven into silence by kicking
him out of the way. He lit the gas with a neatly written sheet of music
which he rammed into the fire Mary Ann had been keeping up, then as
silently he indicated the easy-chair.

"Thank you," said the swarthy young man, taking it. "I would rather see
you in it, but as there's only one, I know you wouldn't be feeling a
gentleman; and that would make us both uncomfortable."

"'Pon my word, Peter," Lancelot burst forth, "you're enough to provoke a
saint."

"'Pon my word, Lancelot," replied Peter imperturbably, "you're more than
enough to provoke a sinner. Why, what have you to be ashamed of? You've
got one of the cosiest dens in London and one of the comfortablest
chairs. Why, it's twice as jolly as the garret we shared at Leipsic--up
the ninety stairs."

"We're not in Germany now. I don't want to receive visitors," answered
Lancelot sulkily.

"A visitor! you call me a visitor! Lancelot, it's plain you were not
telling the truth when you said just now you had forgiven me."

"I had forgiven--and forgotten you."

"Come, that's unkind. It's scarcely three years since I threw up my
career as a genius, and you know why I left you, old man. When the first
fever of youthful revolt was over, I woke to see things in their true
light. I saw how mean it was of me to help to eat up your wretched
thousand pounds. Neither of us saw the situation nakedly at first--it
was sicklied o'er with Quixotic foolishness. You see, you had the
advantage of me. Your governor was a gentleman. He says, 'Very well, if
you won't go to Cambridge, if you refuse to enter the Church as the
younger son of a blue-blooded but impecunious baronet should, and to step
into the living which is fattening for you, then I must refuse to take
any further responsibility for your future. Here is a thousand pounds;
it is the money I had set aside for your college course. Use it for your
musical tomfoolery if you insist, and then--get what living you can.'
Which was severe but dignified, unpaternal yet patrician. But what does
my governor do? That cantankerous, pig-headed old Philistine--God bless
him!--he's got no sense of the respect a father owes to his offspring.
Not an atom. You're simply a branch to be run on