er any
further interruptions from my quarter, said: "Mrs. Malcolm, my dear,
Mr. Pound's coffee is all." As a matter of fact Mr. Pound's coffee was
not "all." My mother, never niggardly, had just filled it for the
third time to overflowing, and a full cup rose from a full saucer; but
she had an opportunity, while turning solicitously to her guest, to
give me a frown, which in private would have found fuller expression in
a slipper. As Miss Spinner was still choking, my father proposed
dropping a brass door-key down her back as the most efficacious of
cures. Had she consented to this heroic treatment I might have been
shunted into silence, but her prompt refusal to allow any one to do
anything for her left diplomacy at its wit's end. In the portentous
silence which followed I was able to repeat my question with more
incisive force.

"Yes, but, mother, what is a bumptious Malcolm?"

"David," said my father sternly, "children should be seen and not
heard!"

"But, father," I exclaimed, being aroused by this injustice to defend
myself, "Professor Blight said that I must be one of those bumptious
Malcolms. Those were his exact words--bumptious Malcolms."

As the horse saith among the trumpets, ha! ha! and smelleth the battle
afar off--the thunder of the captains and the shouting--so Mr. Pound
lifted his great mane at the mention of the Professor and swept the
table with eyes full of fire.

"Ha! Judge Malcolm, what have I not told you of this man? Don't you
recall that I warned you we should have to deal with him? When I found
him making trouble in my flock, setting the sheep against the shepherd,
I told you the time would come when he would strive to set the son
against the father."

While I could not understand in what way I had turned against my
father, it was plain to me that the term which the Professor had
applied to my family was one of opprobrium. It was clear, too, that it
had considerable explosive power, for after the first frightened hush
it stirred the whole company into a terrific outburst against my friend
of yesterday. Even Miss Spinner stopped choking, and announced that
she "declared." What she declared was not imparted, but as the general
trend of exclamation was against the Professor I knew that did she
continue her statement it must be aimed at him.

My father leaned back and grasped the knobs of his chair-arms.
"David," he said slowly, "when did Henderson Blight speak in terms so
disr