"Do they?" said Mrs. Dennistoun, with a laugh. "So you have begun to
learn that sort of thing already, Pippo, even here at the end of the
world!"

Pippo was a little mortified by her laugh, and a little ashamed of what
he had said. It is very tempting at eighteen to put on a man's
superiority, yet he was conscious that it was perhaps a little
ungenerous, he who owed all that he was and had to these two ladies; but
naturally he was the more angry because of this.

"I suppose," he said, "that what is in every book that ever was written
is likely to be true! But that has nothing to do with the question. I
won't do anything against you if you forbid me absolutely, granny; but
short of that I will go----"

Mrs. Dennistoun looked at the boy with all the heat in him of his first
burst of independence. It is only wise to compute the forces opposed to
one before one launches a command which one may not have force to ensure
obedience to. He said that he would not disobey her "absolutely" with
his lips; but his eyes expressed a less dutiful sentiment. She had no
mind to be beaten in such a struggle. Elinor had complained of her
mother in her youth that she was too reasonable, too unwilling to
command, too reluctant to assume the responsibility of an act; and it
was not to be supposed that she had mended of this, in all the experience
she had had of her impatient daughter, and under the influence of so
many additional years. She looked at Philip, and concluded that he would
at least find some way of eluding her authority if she exercised it, and
it did not consist with her dignity to be either "absolutely" or
partially disobeyed.

"You forget," she said, "that I have never taken such authority upon me
since you were a child. I will not forbid you to do what you have set
your heart upon. I can only say, Philip, that I don't think your mother
would wish you to go----"

"If that's all, granny," said the boy, "I think I can take my mother
into my own hands. But why do you call me Philip? You never call me that
but when you are angry."

"Was I ever angry?" she said, with a smile; "but if we are to consider
you a man, looking down upon women, and taking your movements upon your
own responsibility, my dear, it would be ridiculous that you should be
little Pippo any more."

"Not little Pippo," he said, with a boyish, complacent laugh, rising up
to his full height. A young man nearly six feet high, with a scholarship
in his pocket