ferring." He was growing very
angry, but his mother flung herself between the combatants.

"Don't, my boy, don't; you must not answer your father in that way.
Richard, what makes you so hard on him to-night? It must be the gout,
Dick: we had better send for Dr. Weatherby in the morning," continued
the anxious woman, with tears in her eyes, "for your dear father would
never be so cross to you as this unless he were going to be ill."

"Stuff and nonsense, Bessie! Dr. Weatherby indeed!" but his voice was
less wrathful. "What is it but fooling, I should like to know, for
Dick to be daundering his time away with a parcel of girls as he does
with these Challoners!"

"I suppose you were never a young man yourself, sir."

"Oh, yes, I was, my boy," and the corners of Mr. Mayne's mouth relaxed
in spite of his efforts to keep serious. "I fell in love with your
mother, and stuck to her for seven or eight years; but I did not make
believe that I was brother to a lot of pretty girls, and waste all my
time dancing attendance on them and running about on their errands."

"You ought to have taken a lesson out of my book," returned his son,
readily.

"No, I ought to have done no such thing, sir!" shouted back Mr. Mayne,
waxing irate again. It could not be denied that Dick could be
excessively provoking when he liked. "Don't I tell you it is time this
sort of thing was stopped? Why, people will begin to talk, and say you
are making up to one of them, it is not right, Dick; it is not,
indeed," with an attempted pathos.

"I don't care that for what people say," returned the young fellow,
snapping his fingers. "Is it not a pity you are saying all this to me
just when I am going away and am not likely to see any of them for the
next six months? You are very hard on me to-night, father; and I can't
think what it is all about."

Mr. Mayne was silent a moment, revolving his son's pathetic speech. It
was true he had been cross, and had said more than he had meant to
say. He had not wished to hinder Dick's innocent enjoyments; but if he
were unknowingly picking flowers at the edge of a precipice, was it
not his duty as a father to warn him?

"I think I have been a little hard, my lad," he said, candidly, "but
there, you and your mother know my bark is worse than my bite. I only
wanted to warn you; that's all, Dick."

"Warn me!--against what, sir?" asked the young man, quickly.

"Against falling in love, really, with one of the Challon